The CRU graph. Note that it
is calibrated in tenths of a degree Celsius and that even that tiny
amount of warming started long before the late 20th century. The
horizontal line is totally arbitrary, just a visual trick. The whole
graph would be a horizontal line if it were calibrated in whole degrees
-- thus showing ZERO warming

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in
many people that causes them to delight in going without material
comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people --
with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many
Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct
too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they
have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an
ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us
all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

The blogspot version of this blog is HERE. The Blogroll. My Home Page. Email John Ray here. Other mirror sites: Dissecting Leftism. For a list of backups viewable at times when the main blog is "down", see here. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing) See here or here for the archives of this site
****************************************************************************************

28 February, 2014

Humans are NOT to blame for global
warming, says Greenpeace co-founder, as he insists there is 'no
scientific proof' climate change is manmade

There is no
scientific proof of man-made global warming and a hotter earth would be
‘beneficial for humans and the majority of other species’, according to a
founding member of environmental campaign group Greenpeace.

The
assertion was made by Canadian ecologist Patrick Moore, a member of
Greenpeace from 1971 to 1986, to U.S senators on Tuesday.

He told
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: ‘There is no
scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the
dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the
past 100 years. If there were such a proof it would be written down for
all to see. No actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists.’

Moore pointed out that there was an Ice Age 450million years ago when CO2 was 10 times higher.

He
said: ‘There is some correlation, but little evidence, to support a
direct causal relationship between CO2 and global temperature through
the millennia. The fact that we had both higher temperatures and an ice
age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are
today fundamentally contradicts the certainty that human-caused CO2
emissions are the main cause of global warming.’

Even if the
earth does warm up, Moore claims that it will be to the advantage of
humans and other forms of life, as ‘humans are a tropical species’.

PATRICK MOORE ON THE HOT TOPIC OF GLOBAL WARMING

'There
is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are
the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over
the past 100 years. If there were such a proof it would be written down
for all to see. No actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists.

'The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states: “It is
extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the
observed warming since the mid-20th century.”

“Extremely
likely” is not a scientific term but rather a judgment, as in a court of
law. The IPCC defines “extremely likely” as a “95-100% probability”.

'But
upon further examination it is clear that these numbers are not the
result of any mathematical calculation or statistical analysis. They
have been “invented” as a construct within the IPCC report to express
“expert judgment”, as determined by the IPCC contributors.

'When
modern life evolved over 500 million years ago, CO2 was more than 10
times higher than today, yet life flourished at this time. Then an Ice
Age occurred 450 million years ago when CO2 was 10 times higher than
today.

'There is some correlation, but little evidence, to
support a direct causal relationship between CO2 and global temperature
through the millennia. The fact that we had both higher temperatures and
an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they
are today fundamentally contradicts the certainty that human-caused CO2
emissions are the main cause of global warming.

'Today, we live
in an unusually cold period in the history of life on earth and there is
no reason to believe that a warmer climate would be anything but
beneficial for humans and the majority of other species. There is ample
reason to believe that a sharp cooling of the climate would bring
disastrous results for human civilization.

'The IPCC states that
humans are the dominant cause of warming “since the mid-20th century”,
which is 1950. From 1910 to 1940 there was an increase in global average
temperature of 0.5C over that 30-year period. Then there was a 30-year
“pause” until 1970.

'This was followed by an increase of 0.57C
during the 30-year period from 1970 to 2000. Since then there has been
no increase, perhaps a slight decrease, in average global temperature.
This in itself tends to negate the validity of the computer models, as
CO2 emissions have continued to accelerate during this time.

'The
increase in temperature between 1910-1940 was virtually identical to
the increase between 1970-2000. Yet the IPCC does not attribute the
increase from 1910-1940 to “human influence.”'

He said: ‘It is extremely likely that a warmer temperature than today’s would be far better than a cooler one.’

Moore said that he left Greenpeace because it ‘took a sharp turn to the political left’.

Dr
Doug Parr, Chief Scientist at Greenpeace UK, told MailOnline: 'On
climate science, Greenpeace accepts the consensus view put forward by 97
per cent of climate scientists, every national and international
scientific institute and every government in the world – climate change
is happening, it’s caused mainly by human activity, and it’s highly
dangerous for the future well-being of people on this planet.'

Moore
has made several other assertions over the years that have been at odds
with Greenpeace's views. He has advocated logging, claiming it actually
causes reforestation, and attacked campaigners for fear-mongering over
nuclear energy.

Before
the Obama administration charges blindly into a European-style feed-in
act to promote renewable energies, they may want to look at what experts
in Europe are saying about how well their own feed-in efforts are
actually doing.

All pain and no gain – certified flop

An
independent committee of expert advisors to the German government is
recommending in a report that the country’s once highly ballyhooed EEG
renewable energy feed-in act be scrapped altogether because it is 1)
“not doing anything for the climate”, 2) “not promoting innovation” and
3) driving up the cost of energy.

The report will be officially presented to the government today.

In
summary, the once highly touted German EEG renewable energy feed-in act
has been all pain and no gain, and the experts see no reason to
continue it.

$30 billion a year…yet “does not provide more climate protection”

According
to the online Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeiting (FAZ) here, the Research
and Innovation commission of experts assigned by the German government
says in its report that “there is no longer any justification for
continuing the EEG Act.”

The experts cite “additional costs of 22
billion euros [$30 billion] per year” and conclude that the renewable
energies have an “exaggerated impact on climate change“. Also the
reports says the Act has not measurably boosted innovation.

“No measureable impact on innovation”

The results of the experts’ report are damning in the harshest terms. The FAZ writes, quoting the report:

The
conclusion of the expert commission is devastating: ‘The EEG act in its
current form is not justifiable from an innovation-political view.”

The report also writes that “there has been no measureable impact on innovation“.

Well, why innovate if profits are guaranteed by massive subsidies?

The most damning text in the FAZ article probably is:

"That’s
why the EEG’s initiated expansion of renewable energies has led to no
additional avoidance of CO2 emissions across Europe, rather they have
only been shifted elsewhere. ‘The EEG Act thus does not produce more
climate protection, rather it just makes it considerably more
expensive.’”

Green energy proponents and lobbyists will certainly
move quickly to ferociously attack and dismiss the report. The FAZ
writes, however, that the expert recommendation is the latest in a
series of expert reports that have reached the same conclusion. But the
FAZ does not expect the government to follow the recommendations.

But
the pressure on the German government to radically scale back the EEG
act is mounting as citizens struggle with skyrocketing electricity
prices. Germany has also come under heavy fire from other European
countries who accuse the German government of misusing the feed-in act
in ways to provide competitive advantages to certain companies.

Welcome to the world of ‘settled science’.
With the latest study now placing blame on Sun for the ‘pause’ in global
temperatures, that means there have been at least five seven eight nine
separate explanations to attempt to explain the standstill in global
warming. There is seemingly no end to warmists’ attempts to explain the
global warming standstill. As blogger Tom Nelson noted: ‘If we
don’t understand lack of warming post-1998, how can we understand
warming pre-1998?’ Let’s review:

3) Chinese coal caused the
‘pause’, published in the proceedings of the National Academy of
Science. The study blamed Chinese coal use for the lack of global
warming. Global warming proponents essentially claimed that coal use is
saving us from dangerous global warming

4) The Montreal Protocol caused the ‘pause‘, which reduced CFC’s – but warming will return soon

6)
Volcanic aerosols, not pollutants, tamped down recent Earth warming,
says CU study – March 2013: A team led by the University of Colorado
Boulder looking for clues about why Earth did not warm as much as
scientists expected between 2000 and 2010 now thinks the culprits are
hiding in plain sight — dozens of volcanoes spewing sulfur dioxide. The
study results essentially exonerate Asia, including India and China, two
countries that are estimated to have increased their industrial sulfur
dioxide emissions by about 60 percent from 2000 to 2010 through coal
burning…

Small amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions from Earth’s
surface eventually rise 12 to 20 miles into the stratospheric aerosol
layer of the atmosphere, where chemical reactions create sulfuric acid
and water particles that reflect sunlight back to space, cooling the
planet. Neely said previous observations suggest that increases in
stratospheric aerosols since 2000 have counterbalanced as much as 25
percent of the warming scientists blame on human greenhouse gas
emissions. “This new study indicates it is emissions from small to
moderate volcanoes that have been slowing the warming of the planet.”

7)
Contributions of Stratospheric Water Vapor to Decadal Changes in the
Rate of Global Warming – 2010 Science Mag.: Stratospheric water vapor
concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000. Here we show
that this acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface
temperature over 2000–2009 by about 25% compared to that which would
have occurred due only to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.’

8)
Update Feb. 9, 2014: New paper finds excuse #8 for the ‘pause’ in
global warming: Pacific trade winds: A paper published today in Nature
Climate Change adds the eighth excuse for the ‘pause’ in global warming:
strengthened Pacific trade winds, which according to the authors, were
“not captured [simulated] by climate models.” On the basis of those same
highly-flawed climate models, the authors predict rapid global warming
will resume in a decade or so when those trade winds abate.

9)
Update: Feb. 27, 2014: A new excuse (#9) of the global warming ‘pause’
according to NASA scientists – ‘Coincidence!’ — ‘Coincidence, conspired
to dampen warming trends’: NASA’s Gavin Schmidt & colleagues finds
‘that a combination of factors, by coincidence, conspired to dampen
warming trends in the real world after about 1992’ –

Latest
excuse (excuse #9) for global temperature standstill mocked by skeptics:
‘Apparently, if you go back and rework all the forcings, taking into
account new data estimates (add half a bottle of post-hoc figures) and
‘reanalyses’ of old data (add a tablespoon of computer simulation) you
can bridge the gap and explain away the pause.’

The
ADL has once again put its Leftist foot in it. Its big mistake is
its backing for anything anti-Christian. Now it has revealed
itself as in lockstep with Warmism. I reproduce below some of the
comments that appeared on their own website

The
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today denounced remarks by University of
Alabama – Huntsville professor Roy Spencer who wrote on his blog that
those who refer to him as a climate change “denier” should be called
“global warming Nazis” and that they “are supporting policies that will
kill far more people than the Nazis ever did — all in the name of what
they consider to be a righteous cause.”

He also claims those who
advocate for policies to slow global warming are “like the Nazis” in
that they are fascist and anti-capitalist. The post is also accompanied
by an image of a swastika.

University
of Alabama-Huntsville Professor Roy Spencer’s analogy of proponents of
global warming to Nazis is outrageous and deeply offensive. This
analogy is just the latest example of a troubling epidemic of
comparisons to Hitler and the Holocaust.

It has become too common
to use comparisons to the Holocaust and Nazi imagery to attack people
with opposing views, whether the issue is global warming, immigration or
stem-cell research.

The six million Jewish victims and millions
of other victims of Hitler deserve better. Their deaths should not
be used for political points or sloganeering. This type of
comparison diminishes and trivializes the Holocaust. There is no place
for it in civil discussions.

*
It looks like there is a consensus emerging in the comments. It is that
Dr. Spencer has been called a "climate change denier", and the "denier"
word is commonly associated with the awful Holocaust of the Jews. So
Dr. Spencer has been defamed, many times, without the ADL lending him
their support.

In return, Dr. Spencer has defamed his accusers as
"Nazis". This is actually a pretty good description of what the global
warming alarmists are doing, or threatening to do, to quash free speech
on this subject. Nevertheless I could agree with ADL were they to say
"Dr. Spencer should assert that some of the behaviours of his opponents
are Nazi-like rather than that they are Nazis". Two wrongs don't make a
right, but please do not ignore the original wrong.

* Shelley,
you have this 180 degrees backward, having sat by silently while the
side to which Dr. Spencer was responding has been using the Holocaust
denier reference and Nazi imagery for almost a decade.

As a Jew
and a professional in the environmental industry, I cannot let this go
unanswered. You'll be hearing from me directly. It would be in ADL's
interest to hear what I have to say and show you.

* Time for a retraction and apology to Dr. Spencer. The longer you delay, the more damage done to your fundraising efforts.

*
I suspect that the people who drafted the ADL press release were
unaware of the background history of the use of the word "deniers"
against sceptics as well as the direct comparisons with the holocaust
presented by various commenters. Maybe next time they should not jump
the shark.

* Yep - the ADL doesn't read enough of its friends'
propaganda to realize Spencer is simply satirizing the AGW believers'
own hateful, accusing, generalizing statements. Time for a groveling
apology and full retraction by the ADL, but don't hold your breath.

* I note with wry amusement that you have chosen to speak out against Dr Roy Spencer’s Nazi analogy, in particular noting:

“The
six million Jewish victims and millions of other victims of Hitler
deserve better. Their deaths should not be used for political points or
sloganeering. This type of comparison diminishes and trivializes the
Holocaust. There is no place for it in civil discussions.”

I
agree strongly with your sentiments and don’t support Roy Spencer’s
move. None-the-less, I do wonder at your timing. Roy Spencer has, as
have many others, been subject to more than a decade of public and
private abuse for questioning some of the claims made in support of the
AGW meme. The word “denier” is widely used to characterize anyone who
questions any aspect of “climate change” or “global warming”, and was
chosen specifically to make a link to exactly the same Nazi issue that
you now belatedly condemn. Where has ADL been all these years?

*
Where was ADL when George Monbiot published his book “How to stop the
planet from burning” published in 2006, in which he recommends with
reference to “the climate-change “denial industry”” that “we should have
war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg”

*
Why the double standard? Is “a World without Hate” only for those whose
views you agree with? Where would that put you on the
philosophical scale?

* As noted, I agree with your sentiments
opposing the use of Nazi comparisons in what should be a reasoned
debate about a highly complex and poorly understood scientific issue.
However, I do believe that your organization’s stand would have been a
lot more credible and effective if it had been made when the term
“denier” first appeared.

The Fateful Collision: Floods, Catastrophe And Climate Denial

by
Media Lens, A Califonia Leftist outfit. I reproduce below just
some of a very long article which is quite hysterical about global
warming. The article cites countless "authorities" and rehearses
lots of conspiracy theory but finds not a word to say about actual
climate facts. Their approach is completely authoritarian, in the
best Leftist style. Facts never have mattered to Leftists.
They do however wind themselves up into a wish to destroy their
adversaries -- last paragraph below

An epic struggle is currently taking place that will determine
the fate, and perhaps the survival, of our species. It is a collision
between natural limits and rational awareness of the need to respect
those limits, on the one hand, and the forces of blind greed, on the
other.

Over the next few years, fundamental questions about who
we are as a species really will be answered: Are we fundamentally sane,
rational? Or are we a self-destructive failure that will end in the
evolutionary dustbin?

Even
taken in isolation, the UK floods may constitute an “absolutely
devastating environment incident”, a recent study by conservation
scientists reports:

Noxious hydrogen sulphide fumes and lead
poisoning are among the threats from floodwater contamination – while
animals at almost all stages of the food chain, from insects to small
mammals and birds, are already thought to be drowning or dying from lack
of food.

The second half of our problem is that evidence of this
terminal threat to our existence is being obstructed by literally
hundreds of millions of dollars of organised propaganda.

Earlier this month, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse made a courageous and crucial speech to the US Senate. He commented:

I
have described Congress as surrounded by a barricade of lies. Today,
I’ll be more specific. There isn’t just lying going on about climate
change; there is a whole, carefully built apparatus of lies. This
apparatus is big and artfully constructed: phoney-baloney organisations
designed to look and sound like they’re real, messages honed by public
relations experts to sound like they’re truthful, payrolled scientists
whom polluters can trot out when they need them. And the whole thing big
and complicated enough that when you see its parts you could be fooled
into thinking that it’s not all the same beast. But it is. Just like the
mythological Hydra – many heads, same beast.

Whitehouse’s speech
made repeated reference to a ground-breaking new study by Robert J.
Brulle, professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel
university, which describes the organisational underpinnings and funding
behind climate denial. This is the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive
analysis ever conducted on the topic.

Brulle finds that from 2003
to 2010, 140 foundations made 5,299 grants totalling fully $558 million
to 91 major climate denial organisations. These 91 organisations have
an annual income of just over $900 million, with an annual average of
$64 million in identifiable foundation support. The UK also has its own
denial network.

Disturbingly, Brulle writes that “while the
largest and most consistent funders behind the countermovement are a
number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations
are “dark money,” or concealed funding”.

We must break the back
of the beast… For the sake of our democracy, for the sake of our future,
for the sake of our honour – it is time to wake up.

As NASA
climate scientist James Hansen has suggested, Nuremberg-style trials
must be held for senior corporate (including corporate media) and
political executives responsible for crimes against humanity and planet
that almost defy belief. They must be held to account for their crimes.

Growing
up in the 80s and 90s in Chevy Chase, Maryland, an inside-the-Beltway
suburb, I only learned one thing about fossil fuels: they were causing
global warming. That is, the CO2 my parents’ SUV was producing was
making the Earth a lot hotter and that would make a lot of things worse.
Oh, and one more thing: that this was a matter of scientific consensus.

Looking
into the issue a bit, I found that there were professionals in climate
science, such as Richard Lindzen of MIT, and Patrick Michaels of the
University of Virginia, who said that global warming wasn’t the big deal
it was made out to be. But they seemed to be very much in the minority.
Who was right? Of course, I knew the majority isn’t always right—but it
certainly isn’t always wrong.

What was I supposed to make of all
this? I think this is a predicament most of us experience. On the one
hand, there is something authoritarian about calls to obey “consensus”
such as John Kerry’s recent “When 97 percent of scientists agree on
anything, we need to listen, and we need to respond.” On the other hand,
there is something anti-science about the militant skepticism of some
critics of the “climate change consensus.” For instance, ExxonMobil CEO
Rex Tillerson says: “The term scientific consensus is an oxymoron in
itself.” Not true. How can we possibly function in a complex
division-of-labor society if we don’t consult experts—which includes
learning about what there is consensus on (and what there isn’t) among
the experts in different fields?

Scientific consensuses are an
important part of any modern society—they tell us the general state of
agreement in a field, not so we can blindly obey the experts in question
(experts and consensuses can be wrong) but so that we can understand
and critically think about those experts’ views. For example, if you are
thinking about nutrition, it is a valuable starting point to know where
there is general agreement, where there isn’t, and why. If I read a
book endorsing a controversial diet, I can’t really have a responsible
opinion until I know what most experts in the field think about the
issues—including whether they have powerful arguments against the book’s
claims that I couldn’t have thought of myself.

Thus, statements
of scientific consensus can be extremely valuable tools. But they are
only valuable, and only scientific, if they are explained clearly to the
public. We need to know exactly who agrees with what for what reasons,
and just as importantly, where there is disagreement within the
consensus and for what reasons.

For example, it makes a big
difference if there is a consensus that there is some global warming vs.
a consensus that there will be catastrophic global warming. It makes a
big difference if the consensus is based on issues that the experts have
expertise on, such as climate records, vs. issues that they do not have
expertise on, such as the economics of fossil fuels vs. solar and wind.
Most consensus statements, however, are very unclear on who agrees with
what and why. They are unscientific consensuses—misrepresentations of
the state of scientific opinion designed to further a political agenda.

Take
the consensus statement of the American Geophysical Union, which can be
found in its entirety here. Like most consensus documents, it starts
with something there is definitely a consensus on: “Extensive,
independent observations confirm the reality of global warming.” But
then, with equal certainty, it cites dramatic predictions of climate
models that, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
reluctantly acknowledged, demonstrably failed to predict the climate of
the past two decades. And still, with equal certainty, it calls for
“urgent” political action to reduce fossil fuel use—with no
acknowledgment of the cost of doing so.

Are observations,
dramatic model predictions, and complex political decisions really all
on the same scientific footing? No—but this kind of statement makes it
seem as if they are all a matter of expert consensus.

I have
spent quite a bit of time querying experts on this issue, and in my
understanding the actual consensus in the field is something like the
following.

When CO2 is added to the atmosphere it, all things
being equal, has a mild, decelerating (logarithmic) warming effect; each
additional CO2 molecule leads to less warming than the last. This
effect has made some contribution to the widely-accepted .8 degrees C
average warming in the last 150 years.

Within this consensus,
there is considerable disagreement about whether other aspects of the
atmosphere, called “feedbacks,” significantly amplify the CO2-induced
warming or not. This is called the issue of “climate sensitivity.” More
climate scientists than not seem to believe in significant climate
sensitivity, as evidenced by the fact that the computer models used to
predict climate are based on the assumption of significant climate
sensitivity.

At the same time, there is also consensus that
in the last 15+ years there has been no significant global warming,
despite record, accelerating CO2 emissions, and the climate models based
on high sensitivity failed to predict this. There is dispute over
whether and to what extent this supports the low-sensitivity theory of
CO2. (Here is an account of the data and debate.)

I could go on
about the consensus or lack thereof on other issues—the relationship
between warming and extreme weather events, whether there have been
significant changes in extreme weather events, etc.—but the point is I
want the field of climate science to do that, so that we can think
critically about it and ask questions.

What it shouldn’t be
doing—but is—is telling us what political policies, namely fossil fuel
policies, to adopt. The question of fossil fuel policy is an
interdisciplinary one covering many fields that climate scientists are
not experts on.

That means we need botanists to explain to us the
potential benefits of increased CO2 in the air for plant growth. We
need economists to share their knowledge about the consequences of more
expensive energy if fossil fuels are restricted—and the capacity of
human beings to adapt to climate change (man-made or not) over a period
of decades. We need energy experts to tell us how far away solar, wind,
and other alternatives are from providing the benefits of fossil fuels.
We need geographers to share their knowledge on whether the climate has
become more or less livable as we’ve used fossil fuels.

Having
tried to get this information myself from these fields, I believe that
if the state of knowledge and agreement in each field were objectively
presented, we would conclude that the consequences of continuing to use
large amounts of fossil fuels would be overwhelmingly positive to human
life, and the consequences of restricting them would be overwhelmingly
negative. But right now it’s hard for anyone to know what to conclude,
because in today’s “consensus” statements, representatives of scientific
fields neither explain the state of knowledge precisely, nor do they
stick to their area of specialization.

Take a look at the NASA
Global Climate Change Consensus page, which features 18 different
consensus statements from professional scientific societies. The vast
majority of these organizations don’t specialize in climate science, yet
they make definitive statements about climate science. And many also
use their scientific credibility to demand specific political policies.

The
prestigious American Physical Society says “We must reduce emissions of
greenhouse gases beginning now.” Really? Many in the fields of energy
and economics have argued that forced reductions in greenhouse gases
would lead to catastrophic consequences for human life, particularly in
developing countries that need affordable energy to develop. As an
association of physicists with no specialized knowledge of these issues,
it is an abuse of scientific standing for the American Physical Society
to support specific energy policies. A proper consensus statement by
physicists would educate us about the physics of climate, not the
politics of physicists.

I say, bring on the scientific consensus
about climate change—and the scientific consensuses about everything
else related to energy and environmental policy. Knowing what
specialists in these fields think would be truly valuable information
for our critical thinking about vital issues. But it’s time to stop the
intimidation and manipulation. It’s time to throw out the unscientific
consensus.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

27 February, 2014

So much for peer review

The
publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from
their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that
the works were computer-generated nonsense.

Over the past two
years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in
Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it
into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and
2013. Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer, which is
headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and more than 100 were published
by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), based in
New York. Both publishers, which were privately informed by Labbé, say
that they are now removing the papers.

Among the works were, for
example, a paper published as a proceeding from the 2013 International
Conference on Quality, Reliability, Risk, Maintenance, and Safety
Engineering, held in Chengdu, China. (The conference website says that
all manuscripts are “reviewed for merits and contents”.) The authors of
the paper, entitled ‘TIC: a methodology for the construction of
e-commerce’, write in the abstract that they “concentrate our efforts on
disproving that spreadsheets can be made knowledge-based, empathic, and
compact”. (Nature News has attempted to contact the conference
organizers and named authors of the paper but received no reply*;
however at least some of the names belong to real people. The IEEE has
now removed the paper).

How to create a nonsense paper

Labbé
developed a way to automatically detect manuscripts composed by a piece
of software called SCIgen, which randomly combines strings of words to
produce fake computer-science papers. SCIgen was invented in 2005 by
researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in
Cambridge to prove that conferences would accept meaningless papers —
and, as they put it, “to maximize amusement” (see ‘Computer conference
welcomes gobbledegook paper’). A related program generates random
physics manuscript titles on the satirical website arXiv vs. snarXiv.
SCIgen is free to download and use, and it is unclear how many people
have done so, or for what purposes. SCIgen’s output has occasionally
popped up at conferences, when researchers have submitted nonsense
papers and then revealed the trick.

Labbé does not know why the
papers were submitted — or even if the authors were aware of them. Most
of the conferences took place in China, and most of the fake papers have
authors with Chinese affiliations. Labbé has emailed editors and
authors named in many of the papers and related conferences but received
scant replies; one editor said that he did not work as a program chair
at a particular conference, even though he was named as doing so, and
another author claimed his paper was submitted on purpose to test out a
conference, but did not respond on follow-up. Nature has not heard
anything from a few enquiries.

“The papers are quite easy to
spot,” says Labbé, who has built a website where users can test whether
papers have been created using SCIgen. His detection technique,
described in a study1 published in Scientometrics in 2012, involves
searching for characteristic vocabulary generated by SCIgen. Shortly
before that paper was published, Labbé informed the IEEE of 85 fake
papers he had found. Monika Stickel, director of corporate
communications at IEEE, says that the publisher “took immediate action
to remove the papers” and “refined our processes to prevent papers not
meeting our standards from being published in the future”. In December
2013, Labbé informed the IEEE of another batch of apparent SCIgen
articles he had found. Last week, those were also taken down, but the
web pages for the removed articles give no explanation for their
absence.

Ruth Francis, UK head of communications at Springer,
says that the company has contacted editors, and is trying to contact
authors, about the issues surrounding the articles that are coming down.
The relevant conference proceedings were peer reviewed, she confirms —
making it more mystifying that the papers were accepted.

The IEEE
would not say, however, whether it had contacted the authors or editors
of the suspected SCIgen papers, or whether submissions for the relevant
conferences were supposed to be peer reviewed. “We continue to follow
strict governance guidelines for evaluating IEEE conferences and
publications,” Stickel said.

A long history of fakes

Labbé
is no stranger to fake studies. In April 2010, he used SCIgen to
generate 102 fake papers by a fictional author called Ike Antkare [see
pdf]. Labbé showed how easy it was to add these fake papers to the
Google Scholar database, boosting Ike Antkare’s h-index, a measure of
published output, to 94 — at the time, making Antkare the world's 21st
most highly cited scientist. Last year, researchers at the University of
Granada, Spain, added to Labbé’s work, boosting their own citation
scores in Google Scholar by uploading six fake papers with long lists to
their own previous work.

Labbé says that the latest discovery is
merely one symptom of a “spamming war started at the heart of science”
in which researchers feel pressured to rush out papers to publish as
much as possible.

There is a long history of journalists and
researchers getting spoof papers accepted in conferences or by journals
to reveal weaknesses in academic quality controls — from a fake paper
published by physicist Alan Sokal of New York University in the journal
Social Text in 1996, to a sting operation by US reporter John Bohannon
published in Science in 2013, in which he got more than 150 open-access
journals to accept a deliberately flawed study for publication.

Labbé
emphasizes that the nonsense computer science papers all appeared in
subscription offerings. In his view, there is little evidence that
open-access publishers — which charge fees to publish manuscripts —
necessarily have less stringent peer review than subscription
publishers.

Labbé adds that the nonsense papers were easy to
detect using his tools, much like the plagiarism checkers that many
publishers already employ. But because he could not automatically
download all papers from the subscription databases, he cannot be sure
that he has spotted every SCIgen-generated paper.

The
Democrats think that climate change is going to be a winning issue for
them in 2014 — and, if they handle it correctly, this could be a winning
issue for the Republicans.

You know, nothing comes out of the Obama White House by mistake. Everything is planned, analyzed, and focus-group tested.

Last
June when President Obama presented his Climate Action Plan at
Georgetown University, some environmentalists hailed it. In response,
Frances Beinecke, the then-president of the Natural Resources Defense
Council, said: “The president nailed it.” The Huffington post reported
that some environmental groups were wary that “Obama would follow
through on the ambitious goals he laid out. Bill Snape of the Center for
Biological Diversity described it as too little, too late.”

But,
environmentalists haven’t been “thrilled with the administration’s
record.” In January, 18 groups sent Obama a strongly worded letter
telling him that he “needs to address climate change more aggressively.”

Obviously,
Obama heard the complaints — making clear which group of constituents
holds sway: billionaire environmentalist donors who believe Democrats
have wavered on climate issues or the economically hard-hit middle class
he claims to champion.

Earlier this month, the Obama
Administration announced the creation of seven “climate hubs” — which
the New York Times called: “a limited step” but said it “is part of a
broader campaign by the administration to advance climate policy
wherever possible with executive authority.” It is unclear what these
“hubs” are or will do, but the stated goal is “to help farmers and rural
communities respond to the risks of climate change, including drought,
invasive pests, fires and floods.”

Washington Examiner columnist
Ron Arnold calls the new hubs “propaganda spigots” and cites Steven
Wilmeth, a southern New Mexico rancher, who said: “It’s another one of
those ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’ deals. All I can
say is, ‘Don’t help me.’ We hear the talk, but they’re not telling us
what regulatory burdens these climate hubs will add to the overwhelming
load we already carry.”

Then on February 14, President Obama
announced a new $1billion “climate resilience fund” that “would go to
research on the projected impacts of climate change, help communities
prepare for climate change’s effects and fund ‘breakthrough technologies
and resilient infrastructure.’”

In the Washington Post, Ed
Rogers called the proposal “tired and unimaginative” — “part of a cookie
cutter approach to our problems: It’s called the billion-dollar give
away.”

Secretary of State John Kerry has received a lot of
attention for his February 16 fear-mongering comments (reported to be
the “first of what is to be a series of speeches on the topic this
year”) in Indonesia during which he called climate change a “weapon of
mass destruction” — the “world’s most fearsome.” He told the students,
civic leaders, and government officials gathered at the U.S. funded
American Center: “Because of climate change, it’s no secret that today
Indonesia is…one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth. It’s not an
exaggeration to say that the entire way of life that you live and love
is at risk.” He then, according to CNN, announced “$332 million in
funding through the Green Prosperity program to help Indonesia tackle
unsustainable deforestation and support clean-energy projects.”

Kerry
also derided scientists and citizens who challenge global warming’s
scientific validity: “We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy
scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific
facts. The science is unequivocal, and those who refuse to believe it
are simply burying their heads in the sand. We don’t have time for a
meeting anywhere of the Flat Earth Society.”

HotAir.com’s Ed
Morrissey responded: “The demand to stop asking questions and testing
the theory isn’t science-based; it’s political. The more that
politicians demand that people stop questioning their use of the
hypotheses of AGW for their preferred policies of top-down control of
energy production, the more obvious those politics become.”

James
H. Rust, retired Georgia Tech engineering professor, told me: “I take
great offense to the Secretary of State of the United States berating
his citizens on a foreign soil. I recall no such incidents occurring in
the past.” He added: “Kerry’s remarks are a political attempt to
convince the American people to adopt policies to reduce fossil fuel use
and lead the world on introducing a world-wide protocol similar to the
expired Kyoto Treaty.” Regarding Kerry calling climate change “the
world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction,” Rust quipped: “Can
his memory be so short not to remember the thousands who have died due
to the war on terror that stretches back to at least 1983 when 241
marines were killed in a Lebanon barracks; trillions of tax dollars
spent on a war that is nowhere near finished?”

On February 17,
the New York Times (NYT) reported that billionaire Obama donor Tom
Steyer plans to spend as much as $100 million during the 2014 election
cycle to “pressure federal and state officials to enact climate change
measures through a hard-edge campaign of attack ads against governors
and lawmakers.” Steyer has been critical of Democrats who waver on
climate issues. The NYT reports that Steyer’s new fund-raising push
“signals a shift within the environmental movement, as donors —
frustrated that neither Democratic nor Republican officials are willing
to prioritize climate change measures — shift their money from
philanthropy and education into campaign vehicles designed to win
elections.”

Working with Democratic strategist Chris Lehane,
Steyer created his political organization NextGen Climate—a 20-person
operation that includes a super PAC that the NYT says is “among the
biggest environmental pressure groups in the country.” NextGen Climate
spends millions of dollars to find climate-sensitive voters and in
television advertising to try to persuade them. NextGen asked supporters
for input on congressional candidates to target in its next ads. The
list included vulnerable Democratic incumbent Senator Mary Landrieu of
Louisiana.

Steyer’s efforts should scare Republicans as he’s been
successful in buying previous elections into which he has waded when he
“burst onto the national political scene” in 2013. According to
the NYT: “He spent $11 million to help elect Terry McAuliffe governor of
Virginia and millions intervening in a Democratic congressional primary
in Massachusetts.”

However, I see all of this Democratic
emphasis on climate change as an opportunity for Republicans — if they
handle it correctly.

The January electricity price index was just
released and revealed that the cost of electricity has hit a new high —
which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the year. CNSNews.com reports:
“During the year, the price of a KWH of electricity usually rises in the
spring, peaks in summer, declines in fall, and is at its lowest point
in winter.”

True to the law of supply and demand, rising
electricity prices in the U.S. have not been inevitable. According to
CNSNews.com, following WWII, the U.S. was rapidly increasing its
electricity generation capacity. In the 1950s and 60s the price remained
relatively stable. However, since 2007, the U.S. has decreased its
electricity production; while the population has increased by more than
14 million people — almost all with multiple electronic gadgets running
simultaneously.

The 2007 benchmark is important because 2006/2007
is when the global warming scare began to influence public energy
policy — this is the time frame when states passed laws requiring
more-expensive renewable energy be part of the total energy portfolio
(laws that set up the rationale for the $150 billion of tax-payer
dollars being spent of green energy projects). It is when the war on
coal began.

The CNSNews.com report states: “The Monthly Energy
Review also indicates that a large part of the decline in U.S.
electricity generation has come from a decrease in the electricity
produced by coal—which has not been replaced by a commensurate increase
in the electricity produced by natural gas or the ‘renewable’ sources of
wind and solar.”

The decline in electricity production —
slightly supplemented by more expensive renewables—has directly caused
the price spike. And Obama’s climate change policies are shuttering more
and more coal-fueled power plants — even after they’ve spent millions
on pollution controls. We can expect continuing higher electricity costs
heading into the 2014 election.

Recently, I received a phone
call from an irate woman. She told me she’d been searching the Internet
for someone who could help her and found me. She explained that she was
an unemployed, single mom living in an 800 square foot apartment. She
said she didn’t turn on her heat because she couldn’t afford it. When
she got her electric bill, she noticed that it had a line item: $1.63
for green energy — about which she declared: “I don’t give a *!%# about
green energy! I am so mad at PNM for making me pay for green energy that
I don’t want!”

I explained that it wasn’t the utility company’s
fault. They are just following the law by incorporating renewables into
the portfolio. It is the lawmakers who deserve her wrath — from the
local and state representatives all the way up to the president.

I
do not know if this woman is a Democrat or a Republican. But I do know
she represents the exact type of voter Obama claims to champion. The
exact type of voter his climate change policies are hurting. These
voters “don’t give a *!%# about green energy”—they care about the rising
cost of electricity.

The Democrats own “climate change.” The Democrats are hurting their own.

If
the Republicans are smart enough to capture the anger of voters — like
the woman who called me — and feature it in television ads, the
Democrats climate change emphasis could be a winning issue for
Republicans. (BTW, Karl Rove, I have the callers’ phone number. Maybe
you could feature her in an ad.)

From
"hide the decline" to the "hockey stick" to Rush Limbaugh, the debate
over climate change is fraught with accusations that the other side is
willfully lying about the facts in order to win. Now there are two
academics out with a paper justifying lying about climate change in
order to convince global governments to "do something" about it.

Fuhai
Hong and Xiojian Zhao, economists at Singapore's Nanyang Technological
University and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
respectively, are publishing a paper in the American Journal of
Agricultural Economics called "Information Manipulation and Climate
Agreements," which argues that manipulation of information by the media
will "enhance global welfare" by inducing countries to agree to
environmental accords (IEAs).

We show that the exaggeration of
climate change may alleviate the problem of insufficient IEA
participation. When the mass media has private information on the damage
caused by climate change, in equilibrium they may manipulate this
information to increase pessimism regarding climate damage even though
in actual fact the damage may not be that great. Consequently, more
countries will be induced to participate in an IEA in this state,
thereby leading to greater global welfare ex post.

The article
purports to prove, with an economic model, that the urgency of climate
change and the necessity of international agreement makes it okay to lie
about the projected consequences of climate change.

Progressives
have advocated lying in order to get their way before, but this model
is actually different from fighting lies with more lies; these two
economists advocate lying even when assuming that the entire debate to
this point has been entirely honest on both sides due to the asymmetric
information problems and game theory involved. Now, they don't advocate
"lying" - they merely propose "information manipulation," "accentuation"
and "exaggeration" on the part of the media in order to enhance global
welfare.

This isn't to suggest that all progressives advocate
lying to further their political ideology, or even that it's
particularly widespread beyond these two professors. But it's out there:
there are academics who so vehemently believe that the urgency of
action on climate change is so great that it justifies mass deception
and lying in order to win, and are prepared to go to complex theoretical
proofs in order to "prove" it.

The
Obama Administration's penchant for rewriting the law via regulation
will get a major test on Monday when the Supreme Court hears a challenge
to the Environmental Protection Agency's "carbon endangerment" rule.
This case is especially significant because it will determine whether
the agency can rewrite its own previous rewrite of the Clean Air Act to
bypass the normal channels of democratic consent.

The Clean Air
Act of 1970 and its 1990 amendments never mention carbon dioxide as a
pollutant. Though global warming has nothing to do with "clean air," the
environmental lobby sued to force the EPA to regulate CO2 emitted by
cars and other "mobile sources." In 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, a 5-4
majority sided with the greens, with Justice Anthony Kennedy joining
the liberals.

That ruling merely held that the EPA could declare
carbon a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, not that the agency must,
but President Obama's climateers have taken it as a license to regulate
carbon across the economy. Beyond tailpipes, they've moved to emissions
from so-called stationary sources, mainly power plants but also heavy
industry such as factories and cement makers.

Problem is, the
Clean Air Act is one of America's largest and most prescriptive laws,
with little provision for executive discretion. If the EPA decides to
regulate something, Congress in the statute tells the EPA how the agency
must regulate for its many specific clean-air programs.

Since
the Clean Air Act was never designed to address CO2 and greenhouse gases
are unlike the pollutants the law was meant to address, the stationary
source programs would wreak economic havoc if applied to carbon. The
statute mandates that the EPA regulate emissions above the specific
numerical threshold of 100 tons of a conventional pollutant like sulfur
dioxide or ozone. But ubiquitous carbon is released in quantities many
orders of magnitude larger than 100 tons, and thus in practice the rule
would sweep up some six million schools, hospitals, farms, churches,
office buildings and even some large homes.

The incredible thing
about Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, which consolidates six
related lawsuits, is that the EPA agrees with all that. The agency
argues that following the law as written would be "unrecognizable" to
the Congress that enacted the law and claims that enforcing the law
would be an "administrative impossibility." The other doctrine the EPA
is asserting is known as "absurd results," meaning that the literal
interpretation of the statute would lead to irrational or unreasonable
outcomes.

The executive branch has always used the absurd results
doctrine to make minor adjustments or to justify not enforcing a legal
provision. And this is what the EPA should have done to avoid
crowbarring carbon into what it admits is an unworkable regulatory
framework. Instead, for the first time the agency is using the legal
theory to arrogate the power to revise plain statutory language. Instead
of 100 tons for carbon, the EPA unilaterally invented the new limit of
75,000 tons.

The Supreme Court is merely being asked to vacate
the stationary source rule-making, not to revisit Mass v. EPA, alas. All
the challenge asks is that if the EPA decides to regulate CO2, then it
must obey the rule of law and regulate CO2 as the Clean Air Act
instructs.

The White House is trying to avoid doing so because
the political pros know that stationary source permitting by the EPA's
own estimates costs as much as $125,120 and can be delayed for as long
as 10 years. Democratic voters attend church and own small businesses
too, and the political backlash would be fierce.

The White House
could have persuaded Congress to adopt a new round of clean-air
amendments, or to pass cap and trade. It tried the latter in 2009-2010
and failed. Justice Kennedy, the swing vote, must decide if federal
regulators can assume the power to rewrite laws on their own without the
authority granted by Congress. That would be the most absurd result of
all.

At
PMQs Ed went on the attack over Owen Paterson’s sceptical comments
about climate change. The line of questioning reminded Guido of the
Green Party’s recent totalitarian demand for a purge of climate change
sceptics from ministerial and adviser positions in government. A Labour
spokesman has confirmed to Guido that Miliband backs a similar ban.

“The qualification for being in a Labour government is rationality and
believing in clear scientific evidence.”

Anyone working in a
Labour government would be required to accept the party’s position on
climate change. Anyone who doesn’t won’t be allowed to join. Dissenters
will be exiled…

Blaming storms on human industry is as backward as blaming them on gays

What
a laugh we all had a few weeks ago when that UK Independence Party
councillor, David Silvester, said floods in England were caused by gay
marriage. Remember the merriment? The eccentric (I’m being polite)
Silvester wrote to his local newspaper in Oxfordshire to say that the
reason we are ‘beset by storms’ is because PM David Cameron acted
‘arrogantly against the gospel’ by allowing gay people to get hitched,
and the internet exploded into guffaws. Silvester became the subject of
witty memes, mocking tweets, and searing newspaper critiques. He was
eventually ditched by UKIP. Everyone asked the same question: ‘In the
twenty-first century what sort of person seriously believes that natural
calamities like floods can be blamed on allegedly “sinful” behaviour?!’

Well,
now we know. Now, as flooding in the south-west of England has
intensified in recent weeks, we know that it isn’t only strange men who
take the Bible literally who see floods as some form of payback or
punishment for humanity’s deviant behaviour – so do the supposedly
rationalist, secularist sections of society, the very people who just
three weeks ago will have had a good old hoot bashing backward
Silvester’s moralisation of floodwaters. Even the right-on moralise the
weather today, treating it almost as a sentient force, a lecturing
force, a vengeful force, and viewing hard rains and gushing waters as a
slap on the wrist to wicked mankind – no, not for being gay, but, in
essence, for being greedy.

Over the past week, as more and more
towns and areas in England have become flooded, the hunt has been on for
proof that it’s the fault of manmade climate change – that is, of man
himself, of polluting, thoughtless, fossil fuel-using man. So former
Conservative environment secretary Caroline Spelman says the floods
should be a ‘sharp reminder’ to climate-change sceptics that they are
wrong and stupid – ‘what is happening now relates to what we were doing
two decades ago’, she said, referring to humanity’s increasing emission
of greenhouse gases. Nicholas Stern, treated by many greens as a
god-like oracle warning us all of future manmade doom, says the floods
were caused by ‘human activities’. From the fawningly faithful reporting
of his words, you could be forgiven for thinking Moses himself had
published some new tablets about man’s wrongdoings. Other observers say
man’s behaviour, his emission of CO2, is ‘loading the dice’ of nature’s
fury, making floods more likely and more epic. One says our ‘wild
weather’, the reason ‘people’s lives and properties [are] at stake’, is
because of manmade climate change.

Labour leader Ed Miliband
explicitly moralised the weather yesterday, when he told the Observer
that ‘people’s homes, businesses and livelihoods [are] coming under
attack from extreme weather’, as if the weather were some kind of
military force. ‘The science is clear’ as to why this is happening, said
Miliband – because man’s activities have rattled the climate and we are
now ‘sleepwalking into a national security crisis’ (there’s that
militaristic metaphor again). One broadsheet columnist bizarrely makes a
link between the floods and human behaviour that he clearly just
doesn’t like, suggesting our ‘extreme weather’ could be down to ‘the
undeniable waste of energy in British cities, where office lights shine
through the night and supermarkets pump out hot air at open entrances
and cold air in their freezer sections’. This is pretty blatantly just
another variant of blaming man’s bad behaviour for floods, albeit a more
PC version than David Silvester’s – the more secularist
flood-exploiters see storms as a consequence of industry, of the
thoughtlessness of office bosses, of the electricity use of big, fat
supermarkets, where the more religious flood-exploiters see them as
spin-offs of gay behaviour.

Ah, the allegedly rationalist ‘man
causes floods’ lobby will say, but we have science on our side whereas
Silvester just had the made-up stories of the Bible. Do they really have
science on their side? Some pretty high-calibre experts have actually
said there is ‘insufficient evidence’ to draw any direct line between
climate change and particular floods or weather events. And as more
sensible heads have pointed out, levels of rainfall in England have long
been pretty unpredictable, and parts of England have always been prone
to flooding. To declare that these floods are definitely a product of
manmade climate change, of ‘human activities’, of ‘what we were doing
two decades ago’, is as fact-lite and driven by underlying moral
prejudices as was Silvester’s claim that gay marriage stirred up the
storms.

Yet across the media, blogosphere and Twitter, numerous
people are hunting high and low for some graph or factlet that might
‘prove’ that climate change – which is, of course, just code for man’s
exploitation of natural resources for the purposes of economic and
industrial growth – is to blame for these floods. These individuals are
driven by precisely the same urge as Silvester was: a longing to
marshall the weather to their pet cause of chastising mankind for what
they view as his immoral behaviour. Even if scientists did find some
connection between climate change and general increased rainfall, we
should remember two things.

Firstly, it would still be the case
that the urge to draw a direct line between our industrialised,
relatively comfortable lives and natural disaster, between supermarkets
and floods, between the fact many of us live in buzzing cities and the
recent outbursts of stormy weather, would be a fundamentally moralistic
rather than scientific project, motored way more by personal distaste
for human behaviour than by anything remotely resembling scientific
fact.

And secondly, mankind more than has the capacity to
protect against increased rainfall and floods, to build new towns and
cities that can withstand such natural whims, by making use of the very
‘human activities’ – ambition, growth, exploitation of natural resources
– that the eco-miserabilist lobby sneers at and blames for every
natural disaster that befalls us.

Every time floods happen these
days, eco-obsessives say the same thing: they are punishment for ‘our
unsustainable lifestyles’ (a Guardian writer in the year 2000); they
offer a ‘glimpse of a possible winter world that we’ll inhabit if we
don’t sort ourselves out’ (a green author, 2007); they are a sign that
‘Poseidon is angered by arrogant affronts from mere mortals like us’
(Mark Lynas in his book Six Degrees). Rough translation? Mother Nature
is punishing us for being bad, for being arrogant, for failing to ‘sort
ourselves out’ and to behave in a fashion that the eco-meek lobby
considers correct and pure. No amount of pseudo-scientific chatter or
grasping at graphs that supposedly reveal the ‘truth’ of these floods
can disguise the fact that, like Genesis before them, and David
Silvester last month, these green-leaning politicos and campaigners are
using weather to warn us out of our wickedness. Who’s backward now?

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

26 February, 2014

Climate Alarmists Never Called Out For Spreading Fear

Al
Gore was at it again over the weekend, scaring people unnecessarily
about global warming. He, and others like him, should be held
accountable for constantly trying to terrify the public. Will they ever
be?

Preaching Saturday in Kansas City, the former vice president
and current hysteric in chief declared while prattling on about the
California drought that "the Dust Bowl is coming back, quickly, unless
we act."

About that first Dust Bowl, the one in the 1930s: Was
that also caused by man-made global warming, during a time when human
carbon dioxide emissions were much lower?

Or was it just a part of the natural climate cycle that's been running throughout Earth's history?

The Kansas City Star reported that Gore packed them in at the "Westin Crown Center ballroom."

In other words, what they heard
at the Folk Alliance International conference was just another
installment in Gore's long line of public disservice.

The man has
made a post-vice-presidency career of scaring people for no reason.
From his wildly exaggerated "Inconvenient Truth" movie to his claim
years ago that the north polar ice cap would be gone by 2013 — it wasn't
— to loopy predictions that "we're approaching this tipping point,"
Gore has been spreading hysteria and fright like a farmer sows seeds.

And
so have the Democrats who have followed. Just last week, Secretary of
State John Kerry said global warming is "the world's most fearsome
weapon of mass destruction." He's clearly taking cues from his boss,
President Obama, who has said that climate change is the "global threat
of our time."

Obviously Kerry is unaware that there are
life-and-death events with long-term consequences occurring in Ukraine
and Venezuela during a time in which America's global reputation is in
sharp decline.

Meanwhile, it seems Obama hasn't noticed how poor
his economic recovery has been and how many Americans are either out of
work or are painfully underemployed.

Maybe shrieking about global
warming is a politician's attempt to cover up his failures while Gore
keeps the climate change flame burning because he has a deep need to
keep proving himself relevant and an oversized ego to feed.

Though
the causes of their obsession might be dissimilar, all alarmists have
one thing in common: Their predictions of disaster — the superstorms,
the underwater coastal cities, famine, mass starvation, the end of snow,
the end of skiing, a dangerous refugee problem — have been wrong.

Sure,
there's been some rough weather recently. But it's just weather. As far
as we know, no reputable scientist has positively linked the unusual
cold and snow to man-made global warming.

Every weather event,
every temperature reading, every cloud or lack thereof that the
alarmists spin as proof of man-made global warming is actually within
the historical variability of our climate.

Despite their record
of failed predictions, the alarmists have never been held accountable
for needlessly stirring up fear and generating anxiety.

Nor have
they been called out for assembling a class of citizens who constantly
hector everyone else about their carbon dioxide emissions.

The
alarmists are instead feted, celebrated, glorified and held up as
noblemen by a media and political class that are as invested in the
narrative as the alarmists are. There's been no critical assessment,
little inquiry into their methods and zero questioning of their motives.

Those questions are saved instead for the backward, unsophisticated skeptics and "deniers" who surely believe Earth is flat.

Though
you wouldn't necessarily know it based on news coverage, the United
States in the reign of President Barack Obama is enduring the most
prolonged period of slow growth and high unemployment since World War
II. The president asserts that he saved us from another Great
Depression, which, like his claim that the stimulus would "create or
save" millions of jobs, is about as provable as the number of angels
that can dance on the head of a pin.

The Obama administration has
done little to spur job creation, but a great deal to inhibit it. The
president mocks the idea of deregulation ("cut two regulations and call
me in the morning"), but the new layers of rules and directives his
administration has layered over the already-existing sedimentary
encrustations cannot have helped.

There is one segment of the
economy that has defied the trough, though, and that's energy. The U.S.
is now the world's leading producer of hydrocarbons. The International
Energy Agency predicts that the U.S. will produce more petroleum than
either Saudi Arabia or Russia by 2015. For the first time since 1949,
the U.S. is a net exporter of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. For the
past several years, the oil and gas industry has added between $300
billion and $400 billion annually to the economy. Without the
hydrocarbon boom, the economy would still be in recession.

Obama
has attempted to take credit for the boom in domestic energy production.
His website boasts, "The President established a national goal in 2011
to reduce oil imports by one third ... "

The president can issue
goals and schedules to his heart's content, but like so much else about
his tenure, these words are piffle. As Mark Mills, an energy analyst at
the Manhattan Institute notes, the president had absolutely nothing to
do with the energy renaissance that is reshaping our economy and can do
more.

Neither did Big Oil. Small businesses, most with fewer than
15 employees, are responsible for 75 percent of America's energy
production. "Fracking" is only part of the story. The boom in on-shore
energy production is the result of American technological prowess wedded
to entrepreneurial genius. Computers and cameras guide probes below
ground, minimizing dry holes. Horizontal drilling permits seams long
inaccessible to be tapped.

Rumor has it that in North Dakota,
epicenter of the Bakken formation, workers are in such demand that
McDonald's is paying up to $18 an hour. The state currently enjoys the
lowest unemployment rate in the nation and boasts a $1 billion budget
surplus.

The boom is not limited to North Dakota. At least 16
other states have more than 150,000 workers associated with the energy
industry. In the states most associated with the fracking revolution --
Pennsylvania, Colorado, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Wyoming -- statewide
employment growth has beaten the national average.

Is the
domestic energy expansion bad for the environment? Certainly not when
natural gas replaces coal. Besides, the world has not yet figured out
how to power itself with other energy sources. Ethanol, which consumes
40 percent of all corn grown in the U.S., provides only 5 percent of
transportation energy. Renewables, including hydropower, biomass wood,
wind, solar and geothermal, accounted for just 9.3 percent of U.S.
energy use in 2012, despite government subsidies. The developing world,
including China, India and Brazil, are unwilling to sacrifice economic
growth on the altar of climate change. Germany, which made a hasty and
emotional switch away from nuclear power after Fukushima and made a
heavy investment in wind power, is now building dirty coal generation
plants to cope with rising prices.

Democrats can sneer at
so-called deniers all they like, but they themselves are denying a hard
reality: Hydrocarbons will continue to power the world for the
foreseeable future. There is no other fuel that can put planes in the
air, for example. If carbon dioxide is causing the planet to warm (and
the models significantly overpredicted the amount of warming so far),
mankind will have to find ways to cope with the problem other than
massive taxes to discourage CO2 use. Maximizing natural gas usage is one
such step. Basic R and D on improving batteries, solar cells and other
technologies is another. Seawalls, dikes and other ameliorating efforts
are a third.

In the interim, the energy boom in the U.S. is a job
creator, a boon to our friends (like Canada, Britain and Israel -- also
poised to exploit the new technologies) and a setback for our
adversaries.

Wind farm firms have been accused of building huge, ineffective turbines to exploit a lucrative loophole funded by the taxpayer.

And although the Government knows about the scam, it has not acted to stamp it out.

The
Government pays different rates for wind energy depending on how much
power is produced by turbines. In an effort to encourage small
businesses and individuals to get involved in the industry, David
Cameron's coalition agreed to buy electricity produced by low-powered
machines at around double the rate of towering turbines. This means
businesses like farms can afford to run a small turbine, which does not
produce huge amounts of electricity.

But some operators are
exploiting a legal loophole by building huge turbines and then slowing
them down so their output is within the same category as a much smaller
machine.

Critics claim it can be highly lucrative because owners
receive the higher Feed-In Tariff (FIT) rate but also have a giant
turbine which will consistently out-perform smaller machines.

But
the practice, known as de-rating, means that some of the huge turbines
scarring the landscape have been deliberately modified to be
ineffective.

The Sunday Post has learned that although the
Westminster Government is aware of specific de-rating cases, it has not
moved to close down the loophole.

Scottish Conservative MEP
Struan Stevenson last night blasted: "The whole thing is getting exposed
as one of the biggest scandals since the collapse of the banks and
de-rating is simply another spoke in the wheel."

Labour MP Sir
Tony Cunningham, who represents Workington in Cumbria, recently quizzed
the Westminster Government to find out what action it was taking. In
response to his parliamentary question Energy Minister Michael Fallon
revealed he was aware that eight of 110 turbines installed at the higher
100kw to 500kw FIT rate up to September 2013 had been de-rated.

He also revealed talks with industry body RenewableUK had not identified a "workable technical solution".

Linda
Holt, of campaign group Scotland Against Spin, said: "Consumers are
being ripped off. They are being forced to pay more for the turbines and
people have suffered greater visual impacts than they need to."

Regulator
Ofgem, which licenses the FIT scheme, said it does not keep a list of
how many turbines on the FIT scheme are de-rated. But when it receives
applications for a modified turbine it makes stringent checks to ensure
the turbine has been permanently downgraded. It also confirmed it has
not yet rejected any applications for the coveted 100kw to 500kw FIT
category.

RenewableUK's deputy chief executive Maf Smith said:
"The wind industry adheres strictly to the guidelines drawn up by the
Department of Energy and Climate Change and the independent regulator
Ofgem.

"When issues have arisen, we have drawn them to the
attention of Government and regulators, recommending improvements to
ensure that the system is robust. The reasons for de-rating are complex.
In some instances, the grid is unable to cope with a turbine operating
at full power, as grid connections are limited in that area."

Department
of Energy and Climate Change spokesperson said: "This is not a
widespread problem and there is little evidence that de-rating is used
as a means of accessing preferential tariffs."

* Wind
farms were "secretly" paid nearly £20m to shut down before spells of
stormy weather, an investigation revealed.

Companies qualify for
"constraint payments" when they have to temporarily close down their
turbines because bad weather would mean they produce so much power the
National Grid would be unable to cope. The cash is paid to the companies
through householders' domestic bills.

Dr Lee Moroney, of the
Renewable Energy Foundation, uncovered a little known system called
"forward trades" in which the Grid decides a sum that will be paid for a
period of heavy weather, which is agreed before the bad weather even
arrives.

It revealed £18.6m in forward trades were paid in
2011/12 in addition to £15.5m in traditional constraint payments. The
payments covered all forms of power generation in England and Scotland
but it is understood the majority applied to wind farms.

*
The Feed-In Tariff is a Government scheme in which fixed-rate payments
are made for every kilowatt hour generated by a turbine through a
"generation tariff".

Turbines with a capacity of between 100kw
and 500kw which come online before March 31 will earn 18.04p per
kilowatt hour of electricity and those which generate 500kw to 1.5m kw
earn 9.79p p/kwh. But the tariffs will be reduced for turbines coming
online after April 1 with 14.82p p/kwh for turbines which produce
between 100kw to 500kw and 8.04p p/kwh for 500kw to 1.5m kw machines.

Turbine
owners can also use the electricity to power their businesses thus
saving thousands of pounds in energy bills. They also see a second
benefit from an "export tariff" in which excess energy not used by the
turbine owner can be sold to the National Grid for 4.64p p/kwh.

* Critics reacted with fury when it was revealed millions of trees had been felled to make way for wind farms.

According
to figures released in 2011, 10,000 hectares of woodland had been
felled over the past decade to allow giant turbines to be built. It
meant an area covering almost twice the size of Dundee could have been
felled to fuel Scotland's "renewables revolution".

Critics hit
out at the destruction of the forests which naturally soak up C02
emissions. John Mayhew, of the Association for the Protection of Rural
Scotland warned wind farms were the biggest threat to Scotland's rural
habitats and landscapes.

* Last week The Sunday Post
revealed tycoon Donald Trump was facing a fresh battle over wind
turbines - at his new golf course in Ireland.

He recently
withdrew plans to build a second golf course in Aberdeenshire, after
losing a legal battle to stop construction of 11 turbines off the coast.
He then revealed he had invested £12.4m in the Doonbeg Golf Club in
County Clare instead.

But a planning application has been lodged for nine giant turbines to be built three miles inland from the course.

Environmental campaigners say they will be contacting Mr Trump to ask for his support in opposing the plans.

*
In November The Sunday Post revealed a Scots dog owner had won a battle
to have two wind turbines removed after claiming her pet suffered
seizures.

But 66-year-old Irene Cardle's victory was tinged with
sadness because her beloved dog Shadow died just days after the 19-yard
machines came down.

Irene claimed Shadow's health seriously
deteriorated after nearby Blacklaw Primary School, in East Kilbride,
built two turbines close to her home. The retired book-keeper revealed
the turbines had made their lives a misery and she was forced to leave
the house for hours at a time to escape the constant flicker and whine.

South Lanarkshire Council said it removed the turbines because they were not "cost-effective".

Drought-Stricken California to Get No Irrigation Water; 17 California Communities Could Run Dry

As
the California Farm Drought Crisis Deepens, a federal agency rules
agricultural heartland won’t get any federal irrigation water this
summer.

In a move that will likely signal higher food
prices nationally, a federal agency says California’s drought-stricken
Central Valley — hundreds of thousands of acres of the most productive
farmland in the U.S. — won’t get any irrigation water this summer.

Friday’s
announcement by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation follows an earlier
warning of no irrigation deliveries from the California State Water
Project and leaves Central Valley farms and cities with only wells and
stored water to get through the worst drought since the state began
keeping records in the 1800s.

Statewide, some 8 million acres of farmland rely on federal or state irrigation water.

California
Gov. Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency following reports
that the water content of snow in Northern California’s Sierra Nevada,
whose spring runoff is stored in reservoirs and moved by canals to other
areas of the state, stands at 29% of normal.

The announcement
is significant because California is the largest U.S. agriculture
producer. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent
California Agricultural Statistics for the 2012 crop year, the state
remains the leading state in cash farm receipts, with more than 350
commodities representing $44.7 billion, or 11% of the U.S. total, in
2012.

Over a third of the U.S.’s vegetables and almost
two-thirds of its fruits and nuts were produced in California, the
USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service said in a report. The
federal agency’s announcement will particularly affect San Joaquin
Valley farmers who are last in line to receive federal water, San Jose
Mercury News reported, adding that many farmers will have to pump
already overtaxed wells or leave fields fallow this year. Farmers will
leave 500,000 acres of fallow this year, the paper quoted Mike Wade,
executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition, as
saying 17 California Communities Could Run Dry in 100 Days

Is Shutting Off Irrigation Water a Good Idea?

Of course it is. It was a bad idea to provide subsidies to water the desert in the first place.

California
grows a lot of food. Much of it is because of subsidies that overcharge
residential customers [for water] for the benefit of farm owners.

I
have a better idea: eliminate tariffs, crop supports, and all
subsidies. We can get peppers, onions, tomatoes, and other produce and
fruit items from places that do not have US taxpayer subsidies.

Activists
will howl "other countries subsidize farmers". Without a doubt many do.
An if so, it will be at their expense, not US taxpayer expense.

Until
last week I thought the NSW government had in effect banned the coal
seam gas industry. The O'Farrell government has certainly abandoned
public debate and as a result the greenies and Alan Jones have filled
the vacuum with a lot of nonsensical claims.

But last week, the
government designated a coal seam gas project in Narrabri as a
"strategic energy project" which is meant to cut back on red and green
tape.

Jones is in a different class to the greenies. He is a
strong supporter of free enterprise. He supported me and Chris Corrigan
over the waterfront dispute and he has been a strong voice for many good
causes. But, for reasons I do not understand, Jones has a bee in his
bonnet over the gas industry.

I became interested in natural gas
at the request of the Victorian government, which was concerned at the
impact of gas sales to China and its implications for the eastern
Australia gas market. The massive developments in Queensland are already
imposing transitional effects. There is a real prospect Sydney could
suffer gas shortages causing major dislocation to business. Gas prices
are already rising and it could take at least three years to supply
additional gas to Sydney if everything goes well and if the government
holds its nerve.

I do not discard community concerns about the
gas industry. The NSW government has comprehensive regulations to manage
it. Whatever the risks, they need to be addressed. But some activists
are totally opposed to the gas industry regardless of the regulations
and of the consequences.

The Greens also oppose coal and nuclear
power and claim that solar and wind power can make the difference. It's
hard to fathom why they oppose natural gas which has half the emissions
of brown coal.

We all face risks every day. It's a risk to drive
down the street or walk across the road. The question is whether the
risks can be managed. Managing risk is the reality in Queensland,
especially between farmers and the gas industry.

Professor Peter
Hartley from Rice University in the US said: "There is no proven case of
fracturing fluid or hydrocarbons produced by fracturing diffusing from
the fractured zone into an aquifer." I believe you would be hard pressed
to find any independently confirmed cases of water contamination as a
result of drilling by the gas industry after more than 2 million
fracking operations in the US.

There is a revolution in the US
gas industry, to the extent that manufacturing plants that were
established by the US in China are now popping up back home.

The
US will soon have energy independence because of new technologies, such
as fracking and horizontal drilling. In NSW and Victoria you would think
the new technology is some form of plague.

The Santos project will face Jones leading the charge, microphone at the ready.

There
are big changes under way in the NSW, Victorian and Queensland natural
gas markets. Some big decisions will need to be made and they should be
premised on the facts, the science and the public interest. The industry
can provide jobs and rising living standards but for that to happen,
there needs to be sensible debate, not a scare campaign.

Mann,
the climate alarmist who gave the world his dodgy ”hockey stick”, is
now suing sceptic Mark Steyn for mocking him and his lawyers have
produced deceptive legal documents in his defence.

Mann has
published an outright lie that defames me, and should face the same
punishment he wishes to mete out on Steyn for mere mockery.

I do not lie and Murdoch does not pay me to do so. Nor has Mann singled out a single “lie” I’m alleged to have committed.

In
fact, Mann is so reckless with the facts that his tweet links to an
obvious parody Twitter account run by one of my critics, clearly
believing that it’s actually mine.

I have sent Mann the following email:

Dr Mann:

I note your publication of the following defamatory tweet:

You have published an outright lie that defames me.

I
do not lie and am not paid by Rupert Murdoch to lie. You have not
identified in your tweet a single example of an alleged lie, which
suggests you simply made up this defamatory claim.

Indeed, you
were so reckless with the facts that your tweet links to an obvious
parody Twitter account run by one of my critics which you have clearly
believed is mine.

Your other link is to the website of a warmist
journalist who for years was a Murdoch columnist, too, writing on
climate change. Was he, too, paid by “villainous” Rupert Murdoch to “lie
to public”?

I’ve since learned that you last year retweeted
another defamatory comment: “No other media organisation in any other
civilised nation would employ #AndrewBolt as a journalist”.

As it
turns out, that, too, is incorrect. I am not only employed by News Corp
but by Australia’s Network 10 and Macquarie Radio Network, where I host
a weekly television show and co-host a daily radio show respectively. I
have also appeared as a commentator on other media outlets, including
the state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Al Jazeera, the BBC
and Canadian radio stations. I am very confident I would be able to
find work as a journalist in another “civilised nation”.

I note
this because repeated defamations under Australia’s law is evidence of
malice – and your history of defaming me shows a complete disregard for
the facts.

It is appalling that you could be so reckless, so
spiteful, so destructive and so ill-informed. I have long doubted the
rigor and the conclusions of your work as a climate scientist and often
deplored the way you conduct debate, but even I had never before today
considered publically calling you a liar.

I demand you delete
your tweet and issue a public apology on the same Twitter account within
24 hours. Failure to do so will not only cast doubt on your commitment
to truth in debates on global warming, but expose you to legal action.

UPDATE

Mann gives a very grudging “not necessarily” apology for his brazen lie (and follows it up elsewhere with a string of insults):

Too
late. His mask has slipped. What else has he repeated - whether
“science” or personal calumnies - that was false and motivated by spite
or self-protection?

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

25 February, 2014

Climate Consensus Con Game

By S. Fred Singer

At
the outset, let's be quite clear: There is no consensus about dangerous
anthropogenic global warming (DAGW)-and there never was. There is not
even a consensus on whether human activities, such as burning fossil
fuels to produce useful energy, affect global climate significantly. So
what's all this fuss about?

Let's also be quite clear that
science does not work by way of consensus. Science does not progress by
appeal to authority; in fact, major scientific advances usually come
from outside the consensus; one can cite many classic examples, from
Galileo to Einstein. [Another way to phrase this issue: Scientific
veracity does not depend on fashionable thinking.] In other words, the
very notion of a scientific consensus is unscientific.

The degree
of consensus also depends on the way the questions are phrased. For
example, we can get 100% consensus if the question is "Do you believe in
climate change?" We can get a near-100% consensus if the question is
"Do you believe that humans have some effect on the climate?" This
latter question also would include also local effects, like
urbanization, clearing of forests, agriculture, etc.

So one has to be rather careful and always ask: What is the exact question for which a consensus has been claimed?

Subverting Peer Review

Finally,
we should point out that a consensus can be manufactured-even where no
consensus exists. For example, it has become very popular to claim that
97% of all publications support AGW. Here the key question to ask is:
Which publications and what exactly is the form of support?

Thanks
to the revelations of the Climategate e-mails, we now have a more
skeptical view about the process which is used to vet publications. We
know now that peer-review, once considered by many as the
`gold-standard,' can be manipulated-and in fact has been manipulated by a
gang of UK and US climate scientists who have been very open about
their aim to keep dissenting views from being published. We also know
from the same e-mails that editors can be bullied by determined
activists.

In any case, the peer-review process can easily be
slanted by the editor, who usually selects the reviewers. And some
editors misuse their position to advance their personal biases.

We
have, for example, the case of a former editor of Science who was quite
open about his belief in DAGW, and actively discouraged publication of
any papers that went against his bias. Finally, he had to be shamed into
giving voice to a climate skeptic's contrary opinion, based on solid
scientific evidence. But of course, he reserved to himself the last word
in the debate.

My occasional scientific coauthors David Douglass
(U. of Rochester) and John Christy (U. of Alabama, Huntsville) describe
a particularly egregious instance of the blatant subversion of
peer-review-all supported by evidence from Climategate e-mails.

Confusing the Issue

Further,
we should mention the possibility of confusing the public, and often
many scientists as well, by clever use of words. I will give just two
examples:

It is often pointed out that there has been essentially
no warming trend in the last 15 years-even though greenhouse forcing
from carbon dioxide has been steadily increasing. At the same time,
climate activists claim that the past decade is the warmest since
thermometer records were started.

It happens that both statements are true; yet they do not contradict each other. How is this possible?

We
are dealing here with a case of simple confusion. On the one hand we
have a temperature trend which has been essentially zero for at least 15
years. On the other hand, we have a temperature level which is highest
since the Little Ice Age ended, around 1800 A.D.

Note that
`level' and `trend' are quite different concepts-and even use different
units. Level is measured in degreesC; trend is measured in degC per
decade. [This is a very general problem; for example, many people
confuse electric energy with electric power; one is measured in joules
or kilowatt-hours; the other is measured in kilowatts.]

It may
help here to think of prices on the stock market. The Dow-Jones index
has more or less been level for the last several weeks, fluctuating
between 15,000 and 16,000, showing essentially a zero trend; but it is
at its highest level since the D-J index was started in 1896.

This
is only one example by which climate activists can confuse the
public-and often even themselves-into believing that there is a
consensus on DAGW. Look at two typical recent headlines:

Both
are correct, but neither mentions the important fact that the trend has
been flat for at least 15 years-thus falsifying the greenhouse climate
models, all of which predict a strong future warming.

And of
course, government climate policies are all based on such unvalidated
climate models-which have already been proven wrong. Yet the latest
UN-IPCC report of Sept 2013 claims to be 95% certain about DAGW! Aware
of the actual temperature data, how can they claim this and keep a
straight face?

Their laughable answer: 95% of climate models
agree; therefore the observations must be wrong! One can only shake
one's head sadly at such a display of "science."

Another trick
question by activists trying to sell a "consensus": "If you are
seriously ill and 99 doctors recommend a certain treatment, would you go
with the one doctor who disagrees?"

It all depends. Suppose I do
some research and find that all 99 doctors got their information from a
single (anonymous) article in Wikipedia, what then?

Opinion Polls

Both
sides in the climate debate have made active use of opinion polls. In
1990, when I started to become seriously involved in climate-change
arguments and incorporated the SEPP (Science & Environmental Policy
Project), I decided to poll the experts. Having limited funds, and
before the advent of widespread e-mail, I polled the officers of the
listed technical committees of the American Meteorological Society-a
sample of less than 100. I figured those must be the experts.

I
took the precaution of isolating myself from this survey by enlisting
the cooperation of Dr Jay Winston, a widely respected meteorologist,
skeptical of climate skeptics. And I employed two graduate students who
had no discernible expertise in climate issues to conduct the actual
survey and analyze the returns.

This exercise produced an
interesting result: Roughly half of the AMS experts believed there must
be a significant human influence on the climate through the release of
carbon dioxide-while the other half had considerable doubt about the
validity of climate models.

Subsequent polls, for example those
by Hans von Storch in Germany, have given similar results-while polls
conducted by activists have consistently shown strong support for AGW. A
classic case is a survey of the abstracts of nearly 1000 papers, by
science historian Naomi Oreskes (UC San Diego); published in 2004
Science, she claimed a near-unanimous consensus about AGW. However,
after being challenged, Oreskes discovered having overlooked some 11,000
abstracts-and published a discreet Correction in a later issue of
Science.

On the other hand, independent polls by newspapers, by
Pew, Gallup, and other respected organizations, using much larger
samples, have mirrored the results of my earlier AMS poll. But what has
been most interesting is the gradual decline over the years in public
support for DAGW, as shown by these independent polls.

Over the
years also, there have been a large number of "declarations, manifestos,
and petitions"-signed by scientists, and designed to influence public
opinion-starting with the "Leipzig Declaration" of 1995. Noteworthy
among the many is the Copenhagen Diagnosis (2009), published to build up
hype for a UN conference that failed utterly.

It is safe to say
that the overall impact of such polls has been minimal, compared to the
political consequences of UN-IPCC (Inter-governmental Panel on Climate
Change) reports that led to (mostly failed) attempts at international
action, like the Kyoto Protocol (1997-2012). One should mention here the
Oregon Petition against Kyoto, signed by some 31,000 (mostly US)
scientists and engineers-nearly 10,000 with advanced degrees. More
important perhaps, in July 1997 the US Senate passed the Byrd-Hagel
Resolution against a Kyoto-like treaty by unanimous vote-which probably
dissuaded the Clinton-Gore White House from ever submitting Kyoto for
Senate ratification.

Is Consensus still an issue?

By now,
the question of a scientific consensus on AGW may have become largely
academic. What counts are the actual climate observations, which have
shaken public faith in climate models that preach DAGW. The wild claims
of the IPCC are being offset by the more sober, fact-based publications
of the NIPCC (Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change).
While many national science academies and organizations still cling to
the ever-changing "evidence" presented by the IPCC, it may be
significant that the Chinese Academy of Sciences has translated and
published a condensation of NIPCC reports.

In the words of physicist Prof Howard "Cork" Hayden:

"If
the science were as certain as climate activists pretend, then there
would be precisely one climate model, and it would be in agreement with
measured data. As it happens, climate modelers have constructed
literally dozens of climate models. What they all have in common is a
failure to represent reality, and a failure to agree with the other
models. As the models have increasingly diverged from the data, the
climate clique have nevertheless grown increasingly confident-from cocky
in 2001 (66% certainty in IPCC's Third Assessment Report) to downright
arrogant in 2013 (95% certainty in the Fifth Assessment Report)."

Climate activists seem to embrace faith and ideology-and are no longer interested in facts.

If
you put John Kerry, Barack Obama and Tom Steyer in a room together, you
would still yet to have a single scientist there. Even so, the three
are hypocritically leading a campaign to demonize climate scientists at
NASA, NOAA, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Columbia, etc., because the three
political kingpins don't agree with the scientists' conclusions about
global warming.

Kerry put this climate McCarthyism in the
spotlight this week when he called the scientists at the above
prestigious institutions "shoddy scientists" and members "of the Flat
Earth Society." Sorry, John, but ramping up personal attacks against
scientists who disagree with you does nothing to hide the fact that your
alleged climate consensus is nothing more than a self-delusional myth.

If
scientific truths were determined merely by a show of hands, and if
people expressing dissenting scientific views had always been
blackballed from expressing their views to the public, people would
indeed still believe the world is flat. Fortunately for science, and
unfortunately for Kerry, the Scientific Method encourages rather than
blackballs critical inquiry and scientific debate. Kerry, Obama and
Steyer may seek to employ climate McCarthyism to silence scientific
inquiry, but neither scientists nor the public are being fooled by their
heavy-handedness and mean-spirited personal attacks.

This Is Alarmist Consensus?

Even
if we were to accept the infallible primacy of consensus, climate
McCarthyists would still be in an embarrassing predicament.

More
than 31,000 scientists have signed a summary of the science explaining
why humans are not creating a global warming crisis. There is no
document making the case for global warming alarmism with nearly as many
scientists' signatures.

A survey of more than 1,800 atmospheric
scientists within the American Meteorological Society shows less than
half of the scientists believe humans are the primary cause of recent
warming.

In a survey of more than 500 climate scientists
conducted by scientists at Germany's Institute for Coastal Research,
less than half agreed that "Natural scientists have established enough
physical evidence to turn the issue of global climate change over to
social scientists for matters of policy discussion."

Scientific
organizations such as the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Polish
Academy of Sciences dispute the notion that humans are causing a global
warming crisis. Others, such as the American Physical Society, point out
that scientists are sharply split on the issue.

Public Not Fooled, Either

Even
more maddening for climate McCarthyists is the general public's refusal
to buy into "The Great Consensus" lie. Living in a political world
where a media-emboldened president can create new laws or negate duly
passed congressional legislation by sheer will and the stroke of a pen,
the three political kingpins cannot fathom a world where the general
public does not similarly fall into line whenever Obama says so. But
whipping the general public into line is a much more difficult task than
Obama whipping his lap-dog media into line.

A recent survey
conducted by the Yale University Project on Climate Change Communication
and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication
reveals only 15 percent of Americans are "very worried" about global
warming. A larger number of Americans - 23 percent - don't believe
global warming is happening at all. The most commonly held point of view
- encompassing 38 percent of Americans - is that global warming is
happening but is only "somewhat" worrisome. The survey also found only
38 percent of Americans expect to be harmed a "great deal" or even a
"moderate amount" by global warming.

Another recent poll
conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal shows Americans rank
global warming dead last among 13 public policy priorities. Just 27
percent said addressing climate change should be a policy priority. A 41
percent plurality said Obama and Congress should wait before addressing
climate change.

It's not just Americans who see through the
climate McCarthyism charade. A survey conducted by Australia's national
science agency, CSIRO, found less than half of Australians believe
humans are a large factor regarding climate change. The subset is even
smaller when those Australians who believe humans are causing climate
change are asked whether they are very worried about it.

The Grand Poobah of Alarmist Myths

This
leads us to the Grand Poobah of alarmist global warming myths - the
assertion that 97 percent of scientists agree that humans are causing a
global warming crisis.

To counter the skeptical consensus
documented above, global warming alarmists frequently make the
unsubstantiated assertion that 97 percent of scientists believe humans
are causing a global warming crisis. The closest thing to actual
evidence supporting such a claim is a couple of "surveys" conducted by
global warming alarmists asking a cherry-picked group of their peers
whether (1) the Earth has warmed during the past 100 years, since the
Little Ice Age ended and (2) whether humans have played a role in the
warming.

The two questions are meaningless in the global warming
debate, as neither of these questions addresses the issues dividing
alarmists and skeptics. Nobody disputes that the Little Ice Age is
thankfully over (and ended while human carbon dioxide emissions were
still quite minimal), and the vast majority of skeptics believe carbon
dioxide emissions have modestly added to the natural warming. So
skeptics like me answer "yes" to both questions and are then lumped into
the 97 percent consensus.

Importantly, these 97 percent
"surveys" deliberately avoid addressing the questions that divide
alarmists and skeptics, such as the context of recent warming compared
to the warmer temperatures that prevailed during the past several
thousand years, the pace of recent warming, the likely pace of future
warming, whether humans were better off during the Little Ice Age
compared to today, whether future warming will benefit or harm human
welfare, to what degree future warming may benefit or harm human
welfare, whether the alarmists' prescribed "solutions" would effectively
mitigate future warming and whether any future temperature mitigation
is worth the immense costs of the alarmists' prescribed solutions.

By
asking survey questions that do not address the core issues dividing
alarmists and skeptics, global warming alarmists attempt to divert
people's attention away from the skeptical consensus documented above.
They deliberately cite the meaningless 97 percent consensus out of
context and then ask trite and simple-minded questions like, "If 97
percent of the world's doctors say you have a life-threatening medical
impairment and you need surgery to address it, would you listen to the
97 percent or the three percent who disagreed?"

This is like
citing a survey in which 97 percent of doctors agree that people should
seek professional medical attention for serious ailments, and then
making a misleading and unsubstantiated jump in logic to assert that 97
percent of doctors support Obamacare. In reality, the alarmists'
assertions of a 97-percent consensus merely prove that 97 percent of
global warming activists are either ignorant about the global warming
debate or are dishonest when explaining it.

But climate
McCarthyism isn't about analyzing scientific evidence and comparing
scientific theories. It is about telling scientific falsehoods and then
having political kingpins preemptively denounce and insult honorable
scientists at the world's most prestigious research institutions by
calling them "shoddy scientists" and members "of the Flat Earth Society"
simply because the scientists disagree with the politicians.

John
Kerry and his fellow political kingpins may believe that climate
McCarthyism will score points with global warming zealots and a
compliant media, but real scientists and most of the general public are
not buying it.

Electricity Price Index Soars to New Record at Start of 2014; U.S. Electricity Production Declining

Big loss of coal-fired plants the main factor

The
electricity price index soared to a new high in January 2014 with the
largest month-to-month increase in almost four years, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Meanwhile, data from the Energy
Information Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy,
indicates that electricity production in the United States has declined
since 2007, when it hit its all-time peak.

The U.S. is producing less electricity than it did seven years ago for a population that has added more than 14 million people.

"The
electricity index rose 1.8 percent, its largest increase since March
2010," said BLS in its summary of the Consumer Price Index released
Thursday.

Electricity Price Index: In December, the seasonally
adjusted electricity index was 203.740. In January, it climbed to a new
high of 207.362.

Back in January 2013, the electricity price index stood at 198.679. It thus climbed about 4.4 percent over the course of a year.

Last
month, the average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity in a
U.S. city also hit an all-time January high of 13.4 cents, according to
BLS. That marks the first time the average price for a KWH has ever
exceeded 13 cents in the month of January, when the price of electricity
is normally lower than in the summer months.

Average Price for a
KWH in January: A year ago, in January 2013, a KWH cost 12.9
cents. The increase in the price of a KWH from January 2013 to January
2014 was about 3.9 percent.

During the year, the price of a KWH
of electricity usually rises in the spring, peaks in summer, declines in
fall, and is at its lowest point in winter. In 2013, the average price
of a KWH in each of the 12 months of the year set a record for that
particular month. January 2014's price of 13.4 cents per KWH set a new
record for January.

Historically, in the United States, rising
electricity prices have not been inevitable. In the first decades after
World War II, the U.S. rapidly increased it electricity production,
including on a per capita basis. Since 2007, the U.S. has decreased its
electricity production, including on a per capita basis.

In the
1950s and 1960s, when U.S. electricity generation was increasing at a
rapid pace, the seasonally adjusted U.S. electricity price index
remained relatively stable. In January 1959, the electricity index stood
at 29.2, according to BLS. A decade later, in January 1969, it was
30.2-an increase of 3.4 percent over a 10-year span.

That
3.4-percent increase in the index from January 1959 to January 1969 was
less than the 4.4 percent the index increased from January 2013 to
January 2014.

Over the last seven years, according to the EIA,
the U.S. has actually decreased its total net electricity generation,
although not in an unbroken downward line from year to year (generation
did increase from 2009 to 2010 before going down again in 2011 and
2012).

The combined 439,391 million KWH increase in electricity
generation from natural gas, wind and solar did not cover the 502,413
million KWH decline in the electricity generated by coal.

Coal was not the only source that produced less electricity in 2012 than in 2007, according to the EIA data.

Electricity
from nuclear power plants dropped from 806,425 million KWH in 2007 to
769,331 in 2012-a decline of 37,094 million KWH or 4.6 percent.

Electricity
generated from petroleum sources dropped from 65,739 million KWH in
2007 to 23,190 million KWH in 2012-a decline of 42,549 million KWH or
about 64.7 percent.

Conventional hydroelectric means of
generating electricity hit their peak in 1997, a decade before overall
electricity generation peaked in the United States. In that year, the
U.S. produced 385,946 million KWH of electricity through conventional
hydroelectric power. By 2012, that had dropped to 276,240 million KWH, a
decline of 109,706 million KWH or 28.4 percent.

You
can hear the enviro screams from Canada all the way to the American
EPA-latest warrior to join the battle against the long-detained Keystone
XL Pipeline.

Just about everyone in the lib-left mainstream
media of both Canada and the U.S.A. are shouting rape because of Canada
Revenue's 2013-2014 audit of high-profile environmental groups,
including the David Suzuki Foundation, Tides Canada, Environmental
Defence, the Pembina Foundation, Eqiuiterre and the Ecology Action
Centre, among others.

They're demanding to know "WHY?"

Though
the environmental groups will slice the pie of reasons into thousands
of pieces, it's because the Canadian government finally decided to take a
stand for the Canadian Aboriginal people and for Canadian interests.

In doing so, the Canadian Government took on the Goliath of the Environmental money war.

This
is the biggest outcome: The Rockefeller Foundation, leader of the
pack of the American billionaires pouring millions into the fake,
anti-oilsands shell organizations that flourish in Canada, has had
the door slammed in its face.

With stand-off impunity,
Rockefeller money runs the enviro world in North America, its deep
pockets making it a veritable Goliath. But make no mistake, that
red imprint on the Rockefeller Foundation face looks an awful lot like a
maple leaf.

The dirty little secret of the Keystone XL Pipeline
is out: Rockefeller Foundation cash runs the Keystone Pipeline
resistance, and it does so on the backs of poverty-stricken Aboriginal
activists. In fact the oilsands are the largest employers of
Aboriginal people in Canada.

Being paid just to hold an
anti-oilsands sign and make a little white noise in orchestrated
protests goes a long, long way when you have hungry children waiting at
home.

With a battle cry as hushed as a farmer's field in Winter,
the Rockefellers came in to the Land of the Maple Leaf with the election
of President Barack Obama back in 2008. That's when the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, headquartered in New York, wrote a 48-page
campaign plan targeting Canada's oilsands. Someone should show the
Rockefellers a map of the 49th parallel.

Big boys with big money
that are slippery as fish, up until now could count on camouflage to
cover their job-killing anti-Canadian missions.

"They committed to a whopping $7 million yearly budget for this battle, now in its fifth year." (Levant).

"Page 36 of their plan couldn't be more clear: They need to put a non-billionaire, non-New York face on their campaign.

"They needed the help of groups like the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN).

"The plan was conceived and planned and funded and managed by white guys in New York.

"So
they made a call down to central casting to order themselves up, to
quote their campaign plan, "First Nations and other legal challenges."

In
the `Rockefeller Vs. Canada Battle', celebrities get to sign their
names to full-page anti-oilsands newspaper ads, the Indians get to do
the grunt work.

Tom Goldtooth from the Indigenous Environmental
Network (IEN), based in Minnesota made this telling statement to the
Washington Post when he said his Aboriginal activists were pretty much
only called upon by white billionaires "when they need something".

As
Levant aptly points out, "the real money in Canadian
environmentalism - the most radical money - isn't Canadian. "It's
from U.S. billionaires and their foundations."

Add to the bully
boys spreading big money to fight Canada, the U.S.-based Tides
Foundation, also pouring millions into vulnerable Indian activists,
directing them in a staged play against Canada's interests.

Now
that the cat's out of the bag, giants of the mainstream media are
starting to report on the hideous hypocrisy of the radical environmental
movement.

Only recently the Post stepped up to the plate with
the somewhat anemic headline: "Within mainstream environmentalist
groups, diversity is lacking". The Post called out millionaire
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s organization known as the Waterkeepers for being
all white guys. "Is it surprising that out of 200 waterkeepers in
his club across America, only one is black?" the Post asked.

"Kennedy's club is whiter than the wheat board. "They're almost as white as the Klan."

Kennedys'
Waterkeepers , around since 1999, and forging deep trails into Canada
for decades, has been whiter than the wheat board for a long time.

Canada
continues to let Kennedy play here, but as As Ezra Levant colourfully
points out: "See, if it were a trust fund-kid like Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. - let alone a Rockefeller (whose family billions came from
oil) - attacking Canada's oil industry, we would laugh and run them out
of town."

The same American billionaires who destroy thousands of
jobs when they do President Barack Obama's bidding in Small Town
America are no longer welcome in The Land of the Maple Leaf.

Are YOU a 'global warming Nazi'? People who label sceptics 'deniers' will kill more people than the Holocaust, claims scientist

Barack Obama, David Cameron and Richard Branson are all `global warming Nazis'.

This
is according to scientist Roy Spencer, who is a professor at the
University of Alabama at Huntsville and a vocal denier of man-made
climate change.

Dr Spencer believe that people who label those
against human-induced global warming `climate deniers' will `kill far
more people than the Nazis ever did.'

He argues, these same people should be appropriately labelled as `global warming Nazis.'

`When
politicians and scientists started calling people like me "deniers",
they crossed the line. They are still doing it,' he wrote in a blog post
published yesterday.

Use of the term 'climate deniers' became
controversial after John Howard, former Australian Prime Minister, said
that the term was used with 'malice aforethought'.

But In
November, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said he is entitled to call
Tory climate sceptics 'deniers' despite a warning by the government's
chief scientist that it is an abusive term.

'Surely I can agree with his scientific advice without agreeing with the choice of verbs, adjectives or nouns,' Clegg said.

Sir
Mark Walport told MPs last year that he was uncomfortable with the
term. He said: 'As far as possible it is always best to avoid abuse.

'People
do get heated and emotional about this. But we have to be clear that
those who argue against the human contribution of climate change are
wrong.'

`They indirectly equate the sceptics' view that global
warming is not necessarily all manmade nor a serious problem, with the
denial that the Nazi's extermination of millions of Jews ever happened'
wrote Spencer on his blog.

`Too many of us for too long have
ignored the repulsive, extremist nature of the comparison,' he
continues. `It's time to push back.'

His reasoning in using the word Nazis is because climate activists are, in his words, 'anti-capitalist fascists'.

`[They are] willing to sacrifice millions of lives of poor people at the altar of radical environmentalism,' he wrote.

The words come from a prominent figure in debates surrounding climate change.

Dr Spencer has been a called number of times by the Republican Party to give evidence to Congress.

But the term `climate change denier' isn't hated by everyone.

Dr
Richard Lindzen, when asked which descriptive term he preferred, said:
`I actually like "denier." That's closer than "sceptic"'.

Steve
Milloy, the operator of the climate change denial website
JunkScience.com, told Popular Science, `Me, I just stick with "denier"
... I'm happy to be a denier.'

Dr Spencer has previously said: `I
view my job a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to
protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimise the role of
government.'

In the opening and closing of his blog, he writes: `Yeah, somebody pushed my button.'

One
could only utter a hollow laugh at the desperation of the BBC last
week, in programme after programme, to put over its fond belief that our
wettest winter for 84 years is all due to man-made climate change.

Today
wheeled on the jailbird Chris Huhne to sell the message, impartially
balanced by a chap saying much the same from the engineering firm CH2M
Hill, which Evan Davis coyly failed to explain makes a fortune from
renewable energy.

Newsnight had Prof Kevin Anderson from that
hotbed of climate zealotry, the University of East Anglia, to tell us
that despite global temperatures having remained pretty flat for 17
years, by 2100 they will somehow have leapt up by a staggering 6C.

When
Panorama, in a programme called Britain Underwater, peddled a similar
message - with the aid of such climate sages as the journalists George
Monbiot and Sir Simon Jenkins - one wearily recalled a Panorama of
November 14 2000 with exactly the same title, blaming floods in
Yorkshire on global warming (on that occasion, with the aid of John
Prescott).

Yet how strange that the BBC never quotes the latest
report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
which it normally cites as gospel, saying that "there continues to be a
lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in
the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale".

In other words, whatever the BBC's propagandists may try to tell us, not even the IPCC believes it.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

24 February, 2014

Where are the Global Warmists for Freedom?

Warmism is an essentially Authoritarian creed

By Daren Jonescu

Global
warming "admitters" -- to distinguish you from those of us you call
"deniers" -- I have a question for you: Do any of you have an answer to
the cataclysm your settled science has proven beyond any possible doubt
is coming which does not require totalitarian measures?

Let me
rephrase that, in case the connotations of the phrase "totalitarian
measures" have not yet passed peer review, in which case their meaning
may not be able to reach minds occupying the rarefied atmosphere of pure
science. My question, then, is: Do you, or any of your gods of
peer review, propose solutions to anthropogenic global climate change
which do not involve the violation of property rights, the restraint of
individual liberty regarding matters of self-preservation (i.e., jobs
and wealth-creation), the weakening of every nation's sovereignty in
favor of increased "global governance," and the expanded empowerment of
thousands of bureaucrats, think-tankers, and advisors accountable to no
one?

I ask this only because it has become apparent that you
admitters, who are undoubtedly on the right side of history -- at least
compared with the anti-science Neanderthals over on this side of the
fence -- are absolutely at wit's end (or even a little beyond that) in
seeking to understand how anyone could possibly continue in ignorance,
when both Leonardo DiCaprio and Scarlett Johansson are on the side of
Truth. Concerned about your shattered (but scientifically
settled!) nerves, I propose to help you out with a little inside
baseball concerning the intellectual (yeah, I know, silly word choice)
reticence of the unbelievers to join in your celebration of the revealed
religion.

Having lived for some time as a kind of
fellow-traveler in the ranks of the denier class -- I know how your
leaders on the political side of things like the word "class" -- I
believe I have divined one of the major causes of their decision to
remain steeped in blindness. To wit, one of the deniers' real
bugaboos about accepting the world's first ever settled science -- and
if we can't accept science that certain, then what must we think of the
heliocentric universe? -- is that the pure science of global warming
seems to have allowed itself to be absorbed completely into a political
movement bent on circumventing the rule of law and individual rights in
the name of unlimited power. Yes, I know it seems crazy, but some
us still imagine we are individual living entities, with a natural urge
to preserve ourselves and determine our own paths in life with a view to
-- I'll wait for you to catch your breath and stop laughing - the
pursuit of happiness, through virtuous action freely chosen and
intellectual interests freely pursued.

In light of this archaism
of individualism that we choose to cling to -- rather bitterly I'm
afraid -- we tend to be somewhat touchy about authoritarianism,
regardless of the auspices under which it is pursued. Hence,
although we like a bit of national security from our national
governments, we tend not to be so keen on government agencies gaining
clandestine access to our private communications, fondling our
women-folk at airports -- "women-folk" was just to remind you that we're
hicks -- or otherwise intruding upon our daily lives in the name of
protecting us. Similarly, although we are more than capable of
feeling concern for, and sympathy with, the poor, infirm, and elderly,
we see no justification in this for the state to confiscate our income
-- which is to say our time and labor, i.e., our lives -- in order to do
generically and coercively what we could more easily (and in all
likelihood more effectively) do through voluntary action, i.e., as free,
moral citizens. To put this another way, I do not see how my
desire to help someone in need affords me the privilege of forcing my
neighbor at gunpoint to do the same.

And this last observation
brings us back to the matter at hand. Listen carefully now --
painful as it may be to decipher my non-peer-reviewed accent, I really
am trying to do you a favor. After all, we all believe plenty of
dumb things in our lives, and get suckered by dozens of false prophets
of one kind or another. I see no reason why you climate change
admitters should be forcibly divested of your faith. Perhaps, in
the long run, it will advance the cause of happiness for you in some
unforeseen way, as our most regrettable follies often seem to be able to
do. Who knows what benefit might accrue to a true believer of
your sort, assuming he does not find himself on the business end of a
glass of progressive Kool-Aid before he finds his way back to
non-settled reality?

Here, then, is my point. Is it
conceivable -- just conceivable -- to you that, having achieved the
Nirvana of settled science regarding man-made climate change, you might
seek to persuade your unfortunate brothers on the outside to see the
light, and to join you in voluntarily altering your collective behavior
in the direction of a less carbonated world? And that you might
just accept the unfortunate possibility that, should you be unable to
persuade us, the imaginary effect you suppose us to be having on the
climate may have to continue through to its ultimate imaginary
apocalypse, given that the alternative solution -- brute force aimed at
curtailing human life -- would be draconian, tyrannical, and inhuman?

The
fear we deniers have, and one reason we are unable to submit to all
your peer-reviewed scholarship, is that your bottom-line answer to these
questions is, has been, and apparently always will be "No."
Here's the little secret you seem to have overlooked: As long as your
AGW advocacy -- has there ever been a more "advocated" scientific
hypothesis? -- remains consubstantially linked to progressive
collectivist political advocacy, no one out here in the non-settled
world is ever going to take you seriously.

Oh, I know -- this is
not about totalitarianism; it's just that the severity of the impending
cataclysm should we "do nothing" makes strong, coordinated, immediate
government action necessary in this case. That "this case is
different" mantra has been essential to the cause from day one.
And that is exactly what bothers some of us. Where are the global
warmists for freedom? Where is just one such person? Instead
you have Michael Mann, who has officially parlayed his peer-reviewed
status into a Nobel Prize he never actually received, a refusal to
release the data he used to settle the science, and a season as the
poster boy for the left's new strategy of silencing "deniers" through
legal intimidation, via his lawsuit against Mark Steyn and the National
Review.

Why is every "concerned" response to the settled science
some variation on tyranny, Goebbels-style propaganda ("97 percent of
scientists agree"), or violent accusations of "idiocy" (polite version)
against everyone who does not swallow the propaganda whole, and follow
you into your tyranny? This is your problem: credibility.
This may seem strange, given that you have all the peer-reviewed settled
science on your side. Unfortunately, you also have Al Gore,
Barack Obama, Herman van Rompuy, the United Nations, Prince Charles, and
sundry other progressive elite men and organizations on your
side. And they are using your settled science as an excuse to
impose tyranny. And you are saying nothing against this -- quite
the contrary, in fact.

In brief, "I need to take over your life,
but it's for your own good," is not a line of argument men who still
imagine themselves to be human are likely to accept, regardless of how
many computer models you can provide to show them why you are demanding
it. You see? It's a credibility issue after all. For,
in our (admittedly unsettled) minds, you are not enlightening us with
science; you are enslaving us with lawless government.

In case
you still cannot understand what I am talking about, allow me to
conclude by seeing your settled cataclysm, and raising you a moral
calamity.

I believe our society has become morally
unhinged. Our popular entertainment is rife with sounds, words,
and images that would have been considered hardcore pornography in the
not too distant past, but that are now available to -- indeed, aimed at
-- every twelve year old, everywhere, all the time. The effect of
this degradation of the sentiments on education, the development of
moral character, marriage and family, and adult socio-political life, is
as settled, in the sense of unmistakably obvious, as any of your
computer climate models -- and even has the added significance of being
observable in the real world, rather than merely in the computer model.

I
sincerely believe that if this trend continues, there will be no saving
civilization and rational thought on this planet, barring a complete
breakdown and renewal which could take centuries before anything
resembling a decent social order was regained. It is possible --
and I do not exaggerate -- that the only way to turn this around before
it is too late would involve, at a minimum, eliminating all modern
popular music, and its accompanying imagery, from public availability
immediately.

Furthermore, I believe it might be necessary to
institute a program of forced "access" to corrective musical forms for
every human being -- let's say two hours per day consisting exclusively
of Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi and Telemann, with one hour per week allowed
for free choice from among any approved selections from any historical
period prior to 1820. Anyone caught listening to music composed
after that year would face fines or imprisonment, depending on the
severity of the offense. One who abstained from his weekly free
choice hour for a given number of weeks might be permitted to trade
those hours for an hour of some more recent compositions, though the
options would of course be limited to avoid overtly negative influences,
e.g. Wagner.

Crazy, right? And yet I am one hundred
percent sure that if everyone followed a music-listening program similar
to the one I have just advised, rather than the one most people have
reduced themselves and their children to today, the world would be a
better place on all levels, and just might avoid any further moral
collapse of the sort that allows people to run submissively into the
arms of totalitarian government just because Al Gore or Michael Mann
told them to.

I have described, somewhat fancifully, what might
save us. And yet I would never actually propose it in practice, or
advocate for it during political campaigns, or call people who disagree
with me about the effects of Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga "morons."
(Okay, I might do that last one.)

Why not? Because,
through it all, and in spite of my belief that all my arguments are
likely to be in vain, I cannot accept the proposition that my diagnosis
of the ills of modern life, or my prognosis for the future if the
current trajectory continues, give me -- or anyone else, elected or
otherwise -- the moral authority to impose a new way of life on other
human beings against their will. So I am forced by the moral
self-restraint of a rational individualist to try to persuade people, to
show them what I mean, and to convince them to pursue a better life
according to my best lights. I cannot force them at gunpoint, just
as they cannot force me.

So why, then, do you climate change
admitters unanimously reject this option, and head straight for the
Obamas, Kerrys, and Clintons of the world as your saviors? Go
ahead, try to persuade me. Bury me in peer-reviewed articles,
arguments from authority, decline-hiding fudgable facts and figures,
anything you like. I will listen, if your case is at least
entertaining. But I will shut you out the moment you begin telling
me what I must do, or what governments are going to impose upon me in
violation of my natural rights, "for my own good."

As soon as you
go that way, we deniers start to suspect that tyranny, not science, was
your real motive all along. Get it? Then try to prove us
wrong.

Industry
groups and Republican-led states are heading an attack at the Supreme
Court against the Obama administration's sole means of trying to limit
power-plant and factory emissions of gases blamed for global warming.

As
President Barack Obama pledges to act on environmental and other
matters when Congress doesn't, or won't, opponents of regulating carbon
dioxide and other heat-trapping gases cast the rule as a power grab of
historic proportions.

The court is hearing arguments Monday about
a small but important piece of the Environmental Protection Agency's
plans to cut the emissions — a requirement that companies expanding
industrial facilities or building new ones that would increase overall
pollution must also evaluate ways to reduce the carbon they release.

Environmental
groups and even some of their opponents say that whatever the court
decides, EPA still will be able to move forward with broader plans to
set emission standards for greenhouse gases for new and existing power
plants.

But a court ruling against the EPA almost undoubtedly
would be used to challenge every step of the agency's effort to deal
with climate change, said Jacob Hollinger, a partner with the McDermott
Will and Emery law firm in New York and a former EPA lawyer.

Republicans
have objected strenuously to the administration's decision to push
ahead with the regulations after Congress failed to pass climate
legislation.

In 2012, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that the EPA was
"unambiguously correct" in using existing federal law to address global
warming.

Monday's case, for which the court has expanded argument
time to 90 minutes from the usual 60, stems from the high court's 2007
ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, which said the agency has the authority
under the Clean Air Act to limit emissions of greenhouse gases from
vehicles.

Two years later, with Obama in office, the EPA
concluded that the release of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping
gases endangered human health and welfare. The administration used that
finding to extend its regulatory reach beyond automobiles and develop
national standards for large stationary sources.

Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack did not link this winter’s frigid and snowy
weather in much of the country to global warming, but said the “climate
is changing” and the federal government wants to help the country’s food
producers.

At a press conference on Thursday at the United
States Agriculture Department’s (USDA) annual Agricultural Outlook
Forum, CNSNews.com asked Vilsack if global warming or climate change
were to blame for the recent cold and snowy weather.

“You know, I
don’t think scientists would suggest that any one weather incident can
be attributed to one specific issue, but I think it’s fair to say that
the climate is changing over a longer period of time,” Vilsack said.

Vilsack
said climate change was the incentive for his Feb. 5 announcement of
the creation of “Regional Hubs for Risk Adaption and Mitigation to
Climate Change” at seven locations around the country.

The press
release announcing the hubs stated that the hubs are part of President
Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan to “responsibly cut carbon pollution,
slow the effects of climate change and put America on track to a
cleaner environment.”

“And that’s one of the reasons why we felt
it necessary to establish these climate change hubs to be able to do a
very longitudinal, thoughtful, data-driven study of the risks and the
vulnerabilities of each region of the country relative to agriculture
and forestry to come up with strategies to allow producers to adapt and
mitigate to the changes they’re seeing,” Vilsack said. “And to then use
our extension service to make sure that they get the information that
allows them to adapt and mitigate.

“We’re seeing a lot of
circumstances that require adjustments on the part of producers and we
want to be able to provide as much help and assistance as we can,”
Vilsack said.

Later in the press conference Vilsack said his agency is “clearly focused on climate change.”

Aside
from climate change, the conference offered participants a wide range
of workshops with topics ranging from attracting a new generation of
farmers, food prices, and how to deal with “invasive pests.”

8,000
people die in the UK every year due to what is being called "Fuel
Poverty". Fuel Poverty is a trendy term for those who can't afford to
heat their home because all the solar panels and windmills, the coal
bans and the wars on fracking have made it too expensive for people not
to freeze to death..

The left, which never misses a chance to
blame profiteering for the failure of its policies, is staging "Die-Ins"
outside energy companies to protect the real "Die-Ins" that they
caused. But the real "Die-Ins" don't involve bored university students
lying down on the concrete and posting the results to Tumblr. They end
with the generation that saved Europe from Hitler dying in their own
homes.

Rising fuel prices can in no small part be attributed to
environmental mania. Energy companies are not run by saints, but neither
do they have an interest in pricing their product out of the reach of
ordinary people. It's hard to sell home heat to the dead or the
destitute. On the other hand environmentalists do indeed want to make it
hard for ordinary to be able to afford to heat their homes. That's not a
conspiracy theory. It's their policy.

Talk of using carbon
credits for "super-energy efficiency" is an admission that a movement
using dead seniors as a prop is actually pushing to make energy use as
expensive as possible and to reduce its use as much as possible. The
"Die In" crowd isn't for lowering energy prices, it's for adding more
taxes that will benefit their own parasitic clean energy experts.

Say
what you will about energy companies, but their business plan involves
selling a product. The anti-energy environmentalists want to make it as
expensive as possible. The costs of their policies are not just a
talking point, but a grim reality.

The family that has to choose
between feeding their children or being able to drive to work and heat
their home is not a talking point; they are the new Kulaks, the victims
of an ideological activist policy that is killing innocent people for
the Green greater good of the environment.

Stalin killed millions
to industrialize the Soviet Union, the Green Left is preparing to kill
millions to deindustrialize North America, Europe and Australia. It's
already doing it. While its activists are trying to peg the blame for
fuel poverty fatalities on a government which is badly out of cash, it
need look no further than its own activists and celebrities who preach
the green life from their mansions.

Clear energy has become the
new Communism, an ideological program that can never be achieved, but
for which we must all strive no matter how many die all along the way.
In Scotland, the perennially deranged Scottish National Party called for
generating 100 percent of the country's electricity from wind, wave and
tidal power by 2020.

This plan would add 900 pounds to the average fuel bill. And that is how fuel poverty gets started.

Wales,
which has the highest fuel poverty rate in the UK, is working on one of
Europe's largest wind farms and has a plan for total clean energy by
2025, if anyone is still alive and hasn't frozen to death. Wind farms
don't tend to do too well in the cold and human beings don't do too well
without heat.

The current "green" policies will see higher
prices for two out of three homes in the UK by the end of the decade.
It's not energy companies, but government policies that are responsible,
especially when companies and homeowners get saddled with the cost of
wind farms and various voodoo measures to fight global warming that
mainly end up putting money in the pockets of well-connected Greenies.

Americans
complaining about high gas and oil prices can buckle up because that is
only a taste of what is coming this way. Two years ago UK petrol prices
hit 6 pounds per gallon. That's nearly 10 dollars, though for the
imperial gallon which is higher than the US gallon. If you think it
costs a lot to fill up a tank now, consider that the UK has a better
ratio of production to population than we do. The high prices aren't an
accident, they're part of the green program.

The Obama agenda
isn't to make energy prices affordable, it's to make them so horribly
impossible to afford that we'll use less energy.

Fuel poverty is the agenda here and we know that's so because he told us so.

"We
can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on
72 degrees at all times and then just expect that other countries
are going to say ok," he said. And, "If somebody wants to build a
coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them
because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse
gas that's being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars
that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative
energy approaches."

That doesn't mean Obama can't heat the White
House at 72 degrees or Hawaii level temperatures. It means that you
can't do it. That's what fuel poverty really means. It means you have to
freeze and if you die, then the community organizers of tomorrow will
use your corpse as a prop in their ghoulish protests outside energy
companies which have to not only cover all the clean energy boondoggles,
but also take the blame for passing on the costs.

Every clean
energy program comes with a rider for ending fuel poverty by 2015 or
2025 or 2255, which would be at least slightly more realistic, but it's
the clean energy that's causing the fuel poverty. A program to create
fuel poverty cannot be expected to prevent fuel poverty. A plan that
makes energy use more expensive will not end fuel poverty, even with any
amount of government subsidies.

The only thing that can end fuel poverty is cheap energy and that is what the left is dead set against.

Yet
oddly enough there was a time when people were able to heat their homes
and drive their cars, when they were even able to carry shopping bags,
minus Wales' tax on shopping bags, and afford to eat. That brief golden
period was stomped out by the friends of the working class, who knew how
urgent it was to make life harsh and miserable and who are busy finding
ways to make it even worse.

All this is for the greater good. Someone's greater good anyway.

Clean
energy is supposed to make for energy independence, but since going
green the UK has become a net energy importer. Scotland risks going the
same way. Enough ideological investment in not-ready for prime time
technologies leads to people freezing to death and purchases of energy
from outside to cover the shortfall.

When all else fails, fake
the figures. Promise impossible energy savings from energy efficiency.
Obama's original stimulus plan focused heavily on energy efficiency in
order to save money and create jobs. It accomplished neither goal, but
the right people in the right companies got paid, which is how it always
works.

Green is too big to fail, even when people are turning
blue. The left from Prince Charlie to the Caliph of Chicago keep telling
us that we have to make do with less and part of making do with less is
shivering in homes without heat or the planet will be destroyed.

You can't make an energy efficient omelet without killing 8,000 or so people a year.

Progress
doesn't just mean unsightly factories and people putting on suits and
going to work in corporations and all the other things that the left
despises. It means the technological progress to keep large numbers of
people from dying.

If the US or the UK are to embrace the living
standards of Africa as Prince Charles would like us to, they will also
embrace its mortality rates. A reduction in the standard of living at
this scale and on such a comprehensive level amounts to mass murder.

The
Soviet Union killed millions for its ideology. The Western left has
only begun and the day will come when a few thousand pensioners dead in
their homes will be weighed as the smallest part of their toll.

The shocking truth is that these floods were not a natural disaster, but the result of deliberate policy

I
fear the front-page story in The Telegraph – revealing that the worst
of the flood damage could have been prevented – didn’t tell the half of
it. Nor did another newspaper’s “exclusive” on the story, reported here
last week, that the Met Office had forecast in November that the three
months between December and February would be drier than usual.

Devastating
evidence has now come to light not just that the floods covering 65
square miles of the Somerset Levels could have been prevented, but that
they were deliberately engineered by Labour ministers in 2009,
regardless of the property and human rights of the thousands of people
whose homes and livelihoods would be affected. Furthermore, that wildly
misleading Met Office forecast in November led the Environment Agency to
take a step that has made the flooding infinitely more disastrous than
it need have been.

The “smoking guns” begin with a policy
decision announced in 2005 by Labour’s “floods minister” Elliot Morley,
later to be jailed for fraudulently claiming more than £30,000 on his
MP’s expenses. Under the heading “Saving wetland habitats: more money
for key sites”, Morley directed that, to comply with the EU’s habitats
directive and a part-EU-funded study involving the Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds, the WWF and the Environment Agency, flooding in
Somerset should be artificially promoted, because “wildlife will benefit
from increased water levels”. The 13 local drainage boards, responsible
for keeping the Levels properly managed, were all to be co-opted into
implementing this policy.

The Environment Agency had already
stopped proper dredging of the River Parrett, which provides the main
channel draining floodwater on the Levels to the sea, because of the
exorbitant cost of disposing of silt under EU waste regulations. And
Morley had vetoed a proposal to build a new pumping station at Dunball,
at the end of the massive Kings Sedgemoor Drain, which would have
allowed much more effective, 24-hour pumping of flood water into the
mouth of the Parrett estuary,

In 2008, an Environment Agency
policy document on the “Parrett Catchment Area” admitted that it was
“still not completely clear” how much the deliberate increase in
flooding would breach “the property rights and Human Rights” of those
whose homes and businesses would be damaged. Yet in 2009, the government
gave £8?million to “restore” – ie, increase flooding on – 10 Somerset
“floodplains”, including the purchase of a large area of farmland at
Southlake Moor next to Burrowbridge on the Parrett, which had been
drained since the 13th century. It was to be handed over to Natural
England to “store” water as habitat for birds when, as the Met Office
was already predicting, climate change would bring drier winters.

This
was where November’s forecast came in, because it led the Environment
Agency deliberately to flood Southlake Moor in the expectation of a dry
winter. When those December and January rains poured down, this large
expanse of water-sodden ground blocked the draining to the already
horribly silted-up Parrett of a very much larger area of farmland to the
east. This was made even worse by the lack of that Dunball pumping
station, vetoed by Morley, at the sea end of the Kings Sedgemoor Drain.

Thus
came about the disaster that has filled our television screens for
weeks. The hydrology of this vast area had been sabotaged by the Labour
government’s deliberate, EU-compliant policy, directed by the
Environment Agency. Only thanks to the intervention of the current
Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, are huge Dutch pumps at Dunball
now belatedly pouring seven million tons of water a day into the sea –
with dredging of the Parrett due to begin as soon as is practicable.

Much
of this story has been painstakingly uncovered by my co-author Richard
North, who has published links to all the relevant official documents on
his EU Referendum blog. As he says, “not only can we now see just how
this flooding was deliberately engineered. It was done in blatant
disregard for the rights of all those who live and work there. The
evidence is now so strong that they should seriously consider suing the
Government for compensation for the damage they have suffered, which
could well amount to hundreds of millions of pounds.”

Energy
minister Michael Fallon orders wind farms to cut compensation charges
as figures show they are paid millions for turbines to stand still in
stormy weather

Onshore wind farms are being paid £30 million a year to sit idle during the windiest weather.

The
payments are made because the cables which transmit power from the
turbines to the National Grid cannot cope with the amount of electricity
they produce during stormy conditions.

Ministers are launching a
fresh crackdown on the compensation charges – which ultimately end up
on customers’ bills - and are threatening to force power companies to
reduce the cost of the payments.

Michael Fallon, the Energy
Minister, has written to renewable power companies warning that he is
ready to change the law to force wind farms to lower their prices if
they fail to cut the costs voluntarily.

The scale of the
compensation payments, which can be disclosed for the first time, will
fuel opposition to wind generators from campaigners who argue that they
are inefficient and blight the landscape.

The payments are made
to wind farm owners on top of “green subsidies” that they already
receive to encourage renewable power plants to be built.

These subsidies are set by the government but paid ultimately from customers’ household bills.

On
a daily basis, the National Grid forecasts what the likely demand for
electricity will be and assesses it against the generating capacity of
wind farms, as well as coal, gas and nuclear power stations.

When
there is expected to be too much electricity generated by power plants
for the network of transmission cables to handle, the National Grid
invites companies to bid for compensation to shut down some or all of
their equipment.

Wind farms are often thought to be among the
first generators chosen to be switched off because they are relatively
easy to stop, by applying brakes to the turbines to halt their movement.

Individual
wind farms companies set the levels of their compensation demands and
the National Grid then chooses which bids offer the best value.

The
total amount paid out through these compensation arrangements – known
as “constraint payments” - has risen dramatically in the last four years
as the number of onshore wind turbines has grown. Between 2010 and
October 2012, £17.8 million was paid in total.

But new figures based on Ofgem data disclose that these payments are expected to cost consumers £30 million this year.

On
one day in August last year, 27 wind farms across the country had to
shut down some or all of their turbines, costing more than £2 million in
constraint payments, according to figures from the Renewable Energy
Foundation.

In the first six weeks of 2014 alone, more than £4.2
million has been paid to wind farms to switch off their equipment, the
Foundation said.

However, under pressure from the government, the
average compensation payment has fallen significantly, even though the
total has risen.

A new licence rule which applies to larger wind
farms bans them from charging high prices, at the expense of consumers,
when they are asked to switch off their turbines.

But smaller
wind farms are exempt from the licence requirement and Mr Fallon is
concerned that some are now charging the National Grid unduly high
prices to shut down.

Smaller wind generators are charging the
Grid 30 per cent more on average to switch off turbines than larger
power plants, the figures showed.

In a letter to Renewable UK, the trade body for wind power, Mr Fallon said this practice must end.

Mr Fallon urged wind power companies to show “restraint” in the prices they charge for compensation.

“Bids
being accepted by National Grid to reduce generation from a few licence
exempt wind farms are substantially higher than those relating to
licensed wind farms,” Mr Fallon said.

The energy regulator,
Ofgem, has contacted some of the offending wind farm owners and these
companies should “cooperate”, explain why their charges are so high,
and, “where appropriate”, reduce their bills, he said.

Mr Fallon
said “the government stands ready, if necessary”, to force individual
wind farms to comply with tougher rules if they fail to cut their
charges.

Ministers are also prepared to “extend the discipline”
of the licence rules, which prevent larger wind farms exploiting the
compensation scheme, to all onshore wind farms regardless of their size,
he said. This will be done “through changes to legislation, should that
prove necessary”, Mr Fallon warned.

The estimates seen by the
Telegraph suggest that on average, wind farms that are exempt from the
licence rules were paid £104 per megawatt hour to turn off their
turbines last year, compared with £80 per megawatt hour for larger
licensed generators.

It is understood that eight wind farms in
particular have been charging excessive rates in exchange for shutting
down turbines during windy weather, although they have not been publicly
named.

Mr Fallon has also written to Energy UK, representing the
major power companies, Scottish Renewables and the Renewable Energy
Association.

Maria McCaffery, Renewable UK’s chief executive,
said the wind farm industry had already taken steps to bring down costs
of compensation and would continue work to “provide the best value for
money for consumers”, she said.

“As the cost of using fossil
fuels is so high - and importing gas is particularly expensive - we need
to lessen our dependence on them by harnessing our own abundant, clean
and totally sustainable resources,” she said.

“Wind is playing an
increasingly vital role in our electricity mix as a flexible energy
source that can be managed to fit our electricity demands by shutting
down and powering up more easily and more quickly than other forms of
energy.”

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

23 February, 2014

"Hockeystick" Mann in financial trouble?

by John O'Sullivan

Massive
counterclaims, in excess of $10 million, have just been filed against
climate scientist Michael Mann after lawyers affirmed that the former
golden boy of global warming alarmism had sensationally failed in his
exasperating three-year bid to sue skeptic Canadian climatologist, Tim
Ball. Door now wide open for criminal investigation into Climategate
conspiracy.Mann arrest photo

Buoyed by Dr Ball's successes,
journalist and free-speech defender, Mark Steyn has promptly decided to
likewise countersue Michael Mann for $10 million in response to a
similar SLAPP suit filed by the litigious professor from Penn. State
University against not just Steyn, but also the National Review, the
Competitive Enterprise Institute and Rand Simberg. Ball's countersuit
against Mann seeks "exemplary and punitive damages. " Bishop Hill blog
is running extracts of Steyn's counterclaim, plus link.

Mann’s chief undoing in all such lawsuits is highlighted in a quote in Steyn’s latest counterclaim:

“Plaintiff
continues to evade the one action that might definitively establish its
[his science’s] respectability - by objecting, in the courts of
Virginia, British Columbia and elsewhere, to the release of his research
in this field. See Cuccinelli vs Rectors and Visitors of the University
of Virginia...”

At last, after 3 years of legal wrangling, it is
made clear why I was so bold as to formally undertake an indemnity to
fully compensate Dr Ball for my own actions in the event Mann won the
case. Respected Aussie climate commentator, Jo Nova was one of the
few to commend my unparalled commitment to Ball's cause.

Steyn’s
legal team, aware of the latest developments from Vancouver, have
correctly adduced that Ball has effectively defeated Mann after the
Penn. State pretender’s preposterous and inactive lawsuit against Ball
was rendered dormant for failure to prosecute. Under law, Mann’s
prevarications, all his countless fudging and evasiveness in the matter,
establishes compelling evidence that his motive was not to prove Ball
had defamed him, but more likely a cynical attempt to silence fair and
honest public criticism on a pressing and contentious government policy
issue.

The fact Mann refused to disclose his ‘hockey stick’ graph
metadata in the British Columbia Supreme Court, as he is required to do
under Canadian civil rules of procedure, constituted a fatal omission
to comply, rendering his lawsuit unwinnable. As such, Dr Ball, by
default, has substantiated his now famous assertion that Mann belongs
"in the state pen, not Penn. State." In short, Mann failed to show
he did not fake his tree ring proxy data for the past 1,000 years, so
Ball’s assessment stands as fair comment. Moreover, many hundreds of
papers in the field of paleoclimate temperature reconstructions that
cite Mann’s work are likewise tainted, heaping more misery on the
discredited UN’s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) which
has a knack of relying on such sub prime science.

I
repeat: I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming
denier. I’ve long believed that it cannot be good for humanity to be
spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I also believe that
those scientists who pretend to know exactly what this will cause in 20,
30 or 50 years are white-coated propagandists.

“The debate is
settled,” asserted propagandist in chief Barack Obama in his latest
State of the Union address. “Climate change is a fact.” Really? There is
nothing more anti-scientific than the very idea that science is
settled, static, impervious to challenge. Take a non-climate example. It
was long assumed that mammograms help reduce breast cancer deaths. This
fact was so settled that Obamacare requires every insurance plan to
offer mammograms (for free, no less) or be subject to termination.

Now
we learn from a massive randomized study — 90,000 women followed for 25
years — that mammograms may have no effect on breast cancer deaths.
Indeed, one out of five of those diagnosed by mammogram receives
unnecessary radiation, chemo or surgery.

So much for settledness.
And climate is less well understood than breast cancer. If climate
science is settled, why do its predictions keep changing? And how is it
that the great physicist Freeman Dyson, who did some climate research in
the late 1970s, thinks today’s climate-change Cassandras are hopelessly
mistaken?

They deal with the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere
and oceans, argues Dyson, ignoring the effect of biology, i.e.,
vegetation and topsoil. Further, their predictions rest on models they
fall in love with: “You sit in front of a computer screen for 10 years
and you start to think of your model as being real.” Not surprisingly,
these models have been “consistently and spectacularly wrong” in their
predictions, write atmospheric scientists Richard McNider and John
Christy — and always, amazingly, in the same direction.

Settled?
Even Britain’s national weather service concedes there’s been no change —
delicately called a “pause” — in global temperature in 15 years. If
even the raw data is recalcitrant, let alone the assumptions and
underlying models, how settled is the science?

But even worse
than the pretense of settledness is the cynical attribution of any
politically convenient natural disaster to climate change, a clever term
that allows you to attribute anything — warming and cooling, drought
and flood — to man’s sinful carbon burning.

Accordingly, Obama
ostentatiously visited drought-stricken California last Friday.
Surprise! He blamed climate change. Here even the New York Times gagged,
pointing out that far from being supported by the evidence, “the most
recent computer projections suggest that as the world warms, California
should get wetter, not drier, in the winter.”

How inconvenient.
But we’ve been here before. Hurricane Sandy was made the poster child
for the alleged increased frequency and strength of “extreme weather
events” like hurricanes.

Nonsense. Sandy wasn’t even a hurricane
when it hit the United States. Indeed, in all of 2012, only a single
hurricane made U.S. landfall . And 2013 saw the fewest Atlantic
hurricanes in 30 years. In fact, in the last half-century, one-third
fewer major hurricanes have hit the United States than in the previous
half-century.

Similarly tornadoes. Every time one hits, the
climate-change commentary begins. Yet last year saw the fewest in a
quarter-century. And the last 30 years — of presumed global warming —
has seen a 30 percent decrease in extreme tornado activity (F3 and
above) versus the previous 30 years.

None of this is dispositive.
It doesn’t settle the issue. But that’s the point. It mocks the very
notion of settled science, which is nothing but a crude attempt to
silence critics and delegitimize debate. As does the term “denier” — an
echo of Holocaust denial, contemptibly suggesting the malevolent
rejection of an established historical truth.

Climate-change
proponents have made their cause a matter of fealty and faith. For folks
who pretend to be brave carriers of the scientific ethic, there’s more
than a tinge of religion in their jeremiads. If you whore after other
gods, the Bible tells us, “the Lord’s wrath be kindled against you, and
he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield
not her fruit” (Deuteronomy 11).

Sounds like California. Except
that today there’s a new god, the Earth Mother. And a new set of sins —
burning coal and driving a fully equipped F-150.

But whoring is
whoring, and the gods must be appeased. So if California burns, you send
your high priest (in carbon -belching Air Force One, but never mind) to
the bone-dry land to offer up, on behalf of the repentant congregation,
a $1 billion burnt offering called a “climate resilience fund.”

As
I point out in my new ebook, The War on Humans, the contemporary
environmental movement is not only fast becoming explicitly anti-human
in its rhetoric and advocacy memes–humans as a “cancer” on the earth,
etc.–but also in its anti-prosperity prescriptions that would make the
developed world far less prosperous–and devastate the ability of the
developing world to escape its bone-crushing destitution.

Take a
new book being promoted by the once sane Sierra Club that advocates
cutting the work week in half so that we can all live less prosperous
lives. From the promotion of the book Time on Our Side in Sierra
magazine:

“There’s no such thing as sustainable growth, not in a
country like the U.S.,” Worldwatch senior fellow Erik Assadourian says.
“We have to de-grow our economy, which is obviously not a popular stance
to take in a culture that celebrates growth in all forms.

But as
the saying goes, if everyone consumed like Americans, we’d need four
planets.” Whether you move to a smaller house or an apartment, downsize
to one or no car, or simply have fewer lattes to-go, a smaller paycheck
could reduce consumption overall…

Shorter workweeks could mean
more time for psychologically gratifying pursuits such as gardening,
reading, or biking. In other words, we should intentionally become
poorer in order to save the planet

Please. Rooting for less
prosperity will not lead to people taking the time to smell the roses
and write poetry, but to more of us leading increasingly difficult, and
even desperate lives.

Indeed, it seems to me that the best cure
for a dirty environment is increased prosperity as that gives us the
ability to live more gently on the land and the resources to develop
ever-more environmentally friendly methods of generating energy,
traveling, heating and cooling our homes, etc..

Think about it:
We despoiled the environment when we were poor, and have made remarkable
progress in remediating past messes and making fewer new ones after
becoming wealthy. The poorest nations today also tend to have the
greatest problems with pollution. See China.

If you like today’s
economy and want more of the kind of “fun” we have had for the last five
years, just follow the green misanthropes.

Tokyo
received 10 inches of snow Saturday morning, the largest amount of
snowfall the city has seen since the global cooling scare of the early
1970s. According to Japanese media reports, the snowstorm
caused 12 deaths and more than 1,500 injuries.
The historic snowfall debunks global warming activists’ assertions that
this year’s unusually fierce winter is merely a North American
phenomenon.

Global temperature measurements show there has been
no warming at all this century, refuting alarmist assertions that the
planet continues to rapidly warm despite the bitterly cold North
American winter. Moreover, heavy snow events and record snow cover
dispute frequent alarmist assertions that global warming is causing an
end to snow.

While human emissions of carbon dioxide may be
assisting the natural warming that pulled the planet out of the Little
Ice Age a little over a century ago, the warming continues to be gradual
and modest. A warming of 1 degree Fahrenheit is not going to put an end
to winter or snowfall.

To the extent that global warming may
moderate winter extreme cold and snow events in the future, this would
benefit rather than harm human health and welfare. Mortality statistics
for the United States, the United Kingdom, and other nations show cold
weather and a colder climate kill far more people than heat.

These facts are inconvenient for global warming alarmists, but a welcome dose of scientific truth for the rest of us.

Tokyo
received 10 inches of snow Saturday morning, the largest amount of
snowfall the city has seen since the global cooling scare of the early
1970s. According to Japanese media reports, the snowstorm
caused 12 deaths and more than 1,500 injuries.
The historic snowfall debunks global warming activists’ assertions that
this year’s unusually fierce winter is merely a North American
phenomenon.

Global temperature measurements show there has been
no warming at all this century, refuting alarmist assertions that the
planet continues to rapidly warm despite the bitterly cold North
American winter. Moreover, heavy snow events and record snow cover
dispute frequent alarmist assertions that global warming is causing an
end to snow.

While human emissions of carbon dioxide may be
assisting the natural warming that pulled the planet out of the Little
Ice Age a little over a century ago, the warming continues to be gradual
and modest. A warming of 1 degree Fahrenheit is not going to put an end
to winter or snowfall.

To the extent that global warming may
moderate winter extreme cold and snow events in the future, this would
benefit rather than harm human health and welfare. Mortality statistics
for the United States, the United Kingdom, and other nations show cold
weather and a colder climate kill far more people than heat.

These facts are inconvenient for global warming alarmists, but a welcome dose of scientific truth for the rest of us.

It's
pretty plain he is omitting a lot from his calculations -- like
the large capital cost of putting up the turbines and the cost of
running backup systems

Wind power has saved Ireland more than
€1 billion in imported energy costs, cut greenhouse gas emissions and
has not added to customers’ energy bills, the Sustainable Energy
Authority of Ireland has said.

“The evidence today is that
renewable energy is working for Ireland and is bringing significant
environmental and economic benefits,” said Brian Motherway, the
authority’s chief executive, ahead of the publication of the renewable
energy report for 2014 yesterday.

Ireland’s wind profile provided
a plentiful renewable resource which also had great potential for
export, he said. “More than €1 billion has stayed in the Irish economy
which would otherwise have left to import fossil fuels from other
countries.”

He said renewable energy sources were being tapped “in a way which did not add to consumer prices”.

Dr
Motherway added: “Wind [power], if anything lowers prices when gas
prices are high. Wind is a uniquely rich resource, it’s plentiful and
it’s cheap and we should continue to exploit it.”

Asked if more
and more turbines would scar the countryside, he said: “There are places
we shouldn’t put turbines and other places which are perfectly
acceptable. There are remote places and depleted bogs which people are
looking at. We should remember that there are a couple of hundred wind
farms out there already which are side by side with communities in
harmony. We hear about the bad cases but we don’t hear about the good
cases.”

Could
Met Office have been more wrong? Just before floods, report told
councils: Winter will be 'drier than normal' - especially in West
Country!

The warmists of the Met office are a good example of the truism that if your theories are wrong, your predictions will be wrong

The
Met Office’s ‘pitiful’ forecasts were under fire last night after it
was revealed it told councils in November to expect ‘drier than usual’
conditions this winter.

In the worst weather prediction since
Michael Fish reassured the nation in October 1987 that there was no
hurricane on the way, forecasters said the Somerset Levels – still under
water after more than two months of flooding – and the rest of the West
Country would be especially dry.

Last night, it was confirmed the UK had instead suffered the wettest winter since records began.

The
three-month forecast, which a Met Office spokesman conceded was
‘experimental to some extent’, was given to councils, the Environment
Agency and other contingency planners to tell them what they could
expect from December to the end of this month.

It was for the whole of the UK – not specific regions – but suggested only the east and south east might see average rainfall.

The
forecasters – using ‘cutting-edge science’ – assured councils there
would be a ‘significant reduction in precipitation compared to average’
for most of the country, adding that there was only a 15 per cent chance
the winter would fall into the ‘wettest category’.

It will have
been of little assistance to the many local authorities facing some of
the most severe flooding Britain has seen in decades.

Swathes of
the country are still underwater, the Army is still helping to pump out
deluged homes and thousands of people have nowhere to live.

Last night it was confirmed that the past 90 days have seen the heaviest rainfall in more than a century.

The
Met Office said the UK had been drenched in 19.2in of rain since
December, making it the wettest winter since records began in 1910.

It had, it said, been exceptionally wet in the South West, South East, central Southern England and across Wales.

MPs
and environmental planners yesterday said the long-term forecast had
been a ‘mistake which could have cost Britain dearly’ and questioned
whether the forecasting methods were fit for purpose.

Tory MP
Chris Heaton-Harris said: ‘The Met Office is very good at predicting the
weather it can see is coming; but beyond that, its track record is
pitiful.

‘Many government agencies and some government policies
are dependent on these Met Office predictions and so these mistakes
potentially are costing us dearly.’

Environmental planner Martin
Parr said of the forecast: ‘It was a load of poppycock. I don’t know
how they could have produced it and circulated it to emergency planners.

There was no way that was going to be the case.

‘It
was known in November there were changes in the jet stream coming
through. It was speeding up, there was more oscillation, that means
strong winds were going to be prevalent, and it was going to be a wet
winter.

The Met Office stopped publishing its long-range
forecasts for the public to see in 2010, after its disastrous prediction
of a ‘barbeque summer’ in 2009 – which ended in washouts throughout
July and August.

The three-month forecasts are now sent only to
contingency planners, such as councils, government departments,
and insurance companies.

The 90-day forecast was issued at the
end of November, and makes clear planners should also consult the
forecasts released 30 and 15 days ahead which are more accurate.

Using
the Met Office’s super-computer, which can perform 100trillion
calculations a second, experts in November predicted there would be
high-pressure weather systems across Britain ‘with a slight signal for
below average precipitation’.

But heavy rains began in December
and the Somerset Levels has since seen some of its worst flooding ever,
with hundreds of properties and farms affected.

Last month the
flooding spread to the Thames Valley and official figures suggest 6,500
properties have been affected. Insurance companies fear the total bill
could reach £1billion.

A spokesman for the Met Office said: ‘Our
short and medium-term forecasts are the ones relied on by emergency
responders to help them manage the impacts of severe weather.

'The
Met Office’s five-day forecasts and severe weather warnings have
provided excellent guidance throughout this period of exceptionally
stormy and wet weather.’

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

21 February, 2014

Charles Krauthammer Destroys Global Warming Myths in 89 Seconds

Last
night on “Special Report with Bret Baier”, columnist Charles
Krauthammer questioned the “settled science” of global warming — an
issue that is currently driving the President’s agenda.

In a clip
discovered by The Daily Caller, Krauthammer rails against the notion of
“settled science,” noting that Isaac Newton’s laws were settled for 200
years before Albert Einstein turned them over.

Speaking about
the economic effects of climate change, Krauthammer noted that “all of
this is driven by this ideology, which in it of itself is a matter of
almost theology

The
Environmental Protection Agency is co-sponsoring a "climate change
video contest" that asks students, ages 11-14:" Why do you care about
climate change?" And: "How are you reducing carbon pollution or
preparing for the impacts of climate change?"

Students are
advised to "be cool" and "be creative" in explaining "how climate change
affects you, your family, friends, and community, now or in the future"
-- and what they are doing to "prepare for a changing climate."

The
Obama administration frequently uses video contests or "challenges" to
advance its liberal viewpoint on a variety of issues, and this is no
exception.

The climate-change videos may be up to two minutes
long, and the top three winning entries will get prizes that can only be
described as environmentally correct:

The first-place winner
gets a solar-paneled backpack, which charges electronic devices; the
second place prize is a "pulse jump rope" that generates enough energy
to charge cell phones; and the third place prize is a "Soccket Soccer
Ball," which turns kinetic energy from play into electrical energy that
can be used to power small devices.

The prizes were selected and
purchased by the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF),
which is co-sponsoring the video contest with the EPA.

NEEF says students should read its "facts" on climate change before getting started on their videos.

Those "facts" include the following statements:

--
The signs of climate change are all around us (higher temperatures,
wilder weather, rising sea level, more droughts, changing rain and snow
patterns).

-- The climate you will inherit as adults will be different from your parents’ and grandparents’ climate.

--
Reducing carbon pollution, and preparing for the changes that are
already underway, is key to solving climate change and reducing the
risks we face in the future.

-- A major way carbon pollution gets into the atmosphere is when people burn coal, oil, and natural gas for energy.

The
tip page also recommends "small actions" students can take to reduce
carbon pollution; "[W]alking to school, smart energy use, and smart
water use, can add up to big reductions in carbon pollution over time,"
it says.

Students are invited to determine their carbon footprint
using NEEF's online calculator. And, in a possible prelude to future
activism, they're urged to consider if their communities, cities, or
states are taking action to reduce carbon pollution.

In a "note for teachers," NEEF says, "This video contest would make a great project for your middle-school class."

The
National Environmental Education Foundation was chartered by Congress
in 1990 to advance environmental knowledge. It describes itself as a
"complementary organization" to the EPA, which leverages private support
for EPA's mission.

President
Obama conceded Wednesday that the lengthy process of evaluating whether
to move ahead with the Keystone XL oil pipeline was probably viewed by
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as “a little too laborious” but
added that economic growth had to be balanced against environmental
concerns, as “we only have one planet.”

In a speech last June
Obama said that he would not approve the pipeline from Canada if the
project would “significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon
pollution.”

During a joint press conference with Harper - a
strong supporter of Keystone – and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto,
a Canadian reporter recalled those words and noted that a State
Department environmental review has found that the pipeline would not
have a significant effect on climate change.

What more needed to be done, the reporter asked.

Obama said he recognized that the process had “been extensive – and at times, I’m sure Stephen feels, a little too laborious.”

Following
the State Department review, federal agencies were now weighing in on
the issue, their input would be evaluated by Secretary of State John
Kerry – and “we’ll make a decision at that point.”

Obama said he
and Harper after lunch Wednesday had “discussed a shared interest in
working together around dealing with greenhouse gas emissions. And this
is something that we have to deal with.”

“I said previously that
how Keystone impacted greenhouse gas emissions would affect our
decision. But frankly, it has to affect all of our decisions at this
stage because the science is irrefutable,” he continued. “We’re already
seeing severe weather patterns increase.

“That has consequences
for our businesses, for our jobs, for our families, for safety and
security. It has the potential of displacing people in ways that we
cannot currently fully anticipate and will be extraordinarily costly. So
I welcome the work that we can do together with Canada.”

Obama said the economic growth fueled by fossil fuel reserves had to be balanced against environmental concerns.

“One
of the wonderful things about North America is we have this amazing
bounty of traditional fossil fuels, and we also have extraordinary
businesses that are able to extract them in very efficient ways – and
that’s something we should welcome because it helps to promote economic
growth,” he said. “But we only have one planet.”

Plans
to extend the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, the London Array in
the Thames estuary, have been scrapped due to fears it would harm
seabirds, in the latest blow to the government’s hopes for the industry.

In
further setbacks on Wednesday, another massive project was scaled back
and a leading executive suggested that turbines were unlikely to be
manufactured in the UK under current policy - raising fears that
overseas firms will remain the main beneficiaries of Britain’s
heavily-subsidised industry.

London Array was opened last summer,
with 175 turbines sprawling an area of almost 40 square miles off the
Kent coast and generating up to 630 megawatts (MW) of power – enough to
power 500,000 homes.

Developers had been planning a second phase
that would deliver more than 200MW of power, with an estimated 56 new
turbines across a further 15 square miles.

But London Array said
on Wednesday it was abandoning the plan because of concern over the
impact on the red-throated diver, a bird classified as rare or
vulnerable by the European Commission.

A large population of the birds spends winter in the area around the wind farm, which has been deemed a special protection area.

The planned extension had already been scaled back from original 370MW plans because of concern for the species.

London
Array said it would have taken at least three years to accurately
assess the impact on the birds from the current turbines and that
“although initial findings from the existing Phase 1 site look positive,
there is no guarantee at the end of three years that we will be able to
satisfy the authorities that any impact on the birds would be
acceptable”.

Separately, another company, Forewind, said it was
scaling back by a fifth its planned Dogger Bank developments off the
coast of Yorkshire.

It was now working on plans for six separate
wind farms to be built in the area rather than eight, reducing the
capacity from 9 GW to 7.2GW.

A spokesman said the decision was in
order to be “more aligned with government targets” and to focus on
those that were closest to going ahead.

Ministers say they want between 8GW and 15GW built by 2020, up from 3.6GW now, and suggest a total of about 10GW is most likely.

However,
they have refused to say how much they expect to be built after 2020,
with officials yesterday insisting only that it was not “credible” to
suggest no more would be built and that there was a “pipeline” of almost
43GW in development.

Forewind's spokesman said: “If you look at
the pipeline in the UK, if they all went ahead it would far exceed the
targets the government has set for offshore wind.”

The projects
Forewind has scrapped would not have been built until after 2020.
However, she said: “If you extrapolate that [2020 ambition] then unless
there is a significant difference in the government ambition
[thereafter] it would be surplus to those requirements”.

She said the projects scrapped were also furthest from shore so probably most expensive to build.

Energy
minister Michael Fallon trumpeted Britain’s status as “the world
leader” in offshore wind, with more turbines running off the coast of
the UK than the rest of Europe combined.

But critics warn that it
is not clear the technology, which currently receives billions of
pounds in subsidies, can ever become commercially viable and point out
few other countries want to pursue offshore wind to the same extent as
Britain.

Just one-tenth of the £2bn cost of the first part of
London Array was spent in the UK but ministers aim to increase that to
50pc for future projects.

A series of manufacturers have set out plans for turbine factories in the UK but none has yet materialised.

Keith
Anderson, chief corporate officer of ScottishPower and co-chair of the
Offshore Wind Industry Council (OWIC) said it was hard to put a figure
on how many wind farms might be built after 2020, especially as there
was a huge question over “how much offshore wind does the government
want?”.

He said: “They have not said a number after 2020. If you
are sitting in the supply chain as a turbine manufacturer, an investor
in a port facility, or someone looking at building vessels for shipping
and cabling, then the longer out those targets go the better and more
helpful it is.

“I suspect if you were looking to build a turbine
factory you want to know there is a reasonable length of time in terms
of orders coming through. For a supply chain company to make that
investment they need to have enough confidence that industry going to
keep on growing.”

Officials at the Department of Energy and
Climate Change said the level built would depend on how much the
industry reduced its costs but said it was "natural" that some projects
would be scrapped.

Ministers have set a target that projects that
start generating in the early 2020s should have a total cost of £100
per megawatt-hour – about twice the current market price of power, with
the difference subsidised through levies on consumer energy bills.

The benefits of using carbon fuels are far greater than their (largely imaginary) costs

The
Environmental Protection Agency, other government agencies and various
scientists contend that fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emissions are
causing dangerous global warming and climate change. They use this claim
to justify repressive regulations for automobiles, coal-fired power
plants and other facilities powered by hydrocarbon energy.

Because
these rules are costing millions of jobs and billions of dollars, a
federal Interagency Working Group (IWG) devised the “social cost of
carbon” concept (SCC) – which attaches arbitrary monetary values to the
alleged impacts of using hydrocarbons and emitting carbon dioxide. SCC
estimates represent the supposed monetized damages associated with
incremental increases in “carbon pollution” in a given year.

With
little publicity, debate or public input, in 2010 the IWG set the cost
at $22 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. Then, in 2013 (again with
little notice), it arbitrarily increased the SCC to $36/ton, enabling
agencies to proclaim massive, unacceptable damages from “carbon,” and
enormous benefits from their regulations. Recently, the Department of
Energy used the $36 formula to justify proposed standards for microwave
ovens, cell phone chargers and laptops!

The SCC allows unelected
bureaucrats to wildly amplify the alleged impacts of theoretical manmade
climate disasters, exaggerate the supposed benefits of rules, minimize
their costs, and ignore the value to society of the facility, activity
or product they want to regulate. That is exactly what is happening.

Fundamental
flaws in the SCC concept and process make the agencies’ analyses – and
proposed rulemakings – questionable, improper, and even fraudulent and
illegal. A new Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI) analysis
examines this in detail.

1) Executive Order 12866 requires that
federal agencies “assess both the costs and the benefits of the intended
regulation and, recognizing that some costs and benefits are difficult
to quantify, propose or adopt a regulation only upon a reasoned
determination that the benefits of the intended regulation justify its
costs.” (EO 12866 was issued by President Clinton in 1993.) A recent
Office of Management and Budget statement notes that careful
consideration of both costs and benefits is important in determining
whether a regulation is worth implementing at all. Indeed, any valid and
honest benefit-cost (B-C) analysis likewise requires that agencies
consider both the benefits and the costs of carbon-based fuels and
carbon dioxide emissions.

Thus far, the EPA and other government
agency analyses, press releases and regulatory proposals have
highlighted only the alleged costs of carbon-based fuels and their
supposed effects on climate change. They have never even mentioned the
many clear benefits associated with those fuels and emissions.

2)
EPA claims the government is “committed to updating the current
estimates, as the science and economic understanding of climate change
and its impacts on society improve over time.” Given the Obama
Administration’s history and agenda, it is highly likely that SCC values
will only increase in forthcoming updates – with literally trillions of
dollars at stake.

3) The IWG methodology for developing SCC
estimates is so infinitely flexible, so devoid of any rigorous
standards, that it could produce almost any estimates that any agency
might desire. For example, its computer models are supposed to combine
climate processes, economic growth, and feedbacks between the climate
and the global economy, into a single modeling framework.

However,
only limited research links climate impacts to economic damages, and
much of it is speculative, at best. Even the IWG admits that the
exercise is subject to “simplifying assumptions and judgments,
reflecting the various modelers’ best attempts to synthesize the
available scientific and economic research characterizing these
relationships.” [emphasis added] Each model uses a different approach to
translate global warming into damages; transforming economic damages
over time into a single value requires “judgments” about how to discount
them; and federal officials have been highly selective in choosing
which “available scientific and economic research” they will utilize. As
objective outside analysts have concluded, this process is “close to
useless.”

4) The differences in the 2010 and 2013 SCC estimates
are so large, and of such immense potential significance, as to raise
serious questions regarding their integrity and validity – especially
since, prior to 2010, the “official” government estimate for carbon
costs was zero!

Finally, and most importantly, the agencies
hypothesize almost every conceivable carbon “cost” – to agriculture,
forestry, water resources, “forced migration” of people and wildlife,
human health and disease, coastal cities, ecosystems and wetlands. But
they completely ignore every one of the obvious and enormous benefits of
using fossil fuels … and of emitting carbon dioxide! Just as
incredibly, they have done this in complete disregard of EO 12866 … and
the OMB ruling that careful consideration of both costs and benefits is
important in determining whether a regulation is worth implementing at
all. Had they followed the law and B-C rules, they would have
found that:

Hydrocarbon and carbon dioxide benefits outweigh the cost by as much as 500 to 1!

In
other words, the costs of EPA and other restrictions on fossil fuel use
exceed their benefits by 50:1 (using the 2013 SCC of $36/ton of CO2) or
even 500:1 (using the 2010 SCC of $22/ton). The entire process is
obviously detrimental to American lives, jobs, living standards, health
and welfare. Yet it is being imposed in the name of preventing highly
speculative “dangerous manmade climate change.”

The successful
development and utilization of fossil fuels facilitated successive
industrial revolutions, launched the modern world, created advanced
technological societies, and enabled the high quality of life that many
now take for granted. Over the past 200 years, primarily because of
hydrocarbon energy, people’s health and living standards soared, global
life expec­tancy more than doubled, human population increased
eight-fold, and average incomes increased eleven-fold, economist Indur
Goklany calculates.

Comparing world GDP and CO2 emissions over
the past century shows a strong and undeniable relationship between
world GDP and the CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. In fact, the
fossil fuels that provide the vast bulk of the world’s total energy
needs – and from which CO2 is an essential byproduct – are creating $60
trillion to $70 trillion per year in world GDP! That relationship will
almost certainly continue for the foreseeable future. Today, 81% of the
world’s energy is from fossil fuels. For at least the next several
decades, fossil fuels will continue to supply 75-80% of global energy.

That
means any reductions in United States fossil fuel use or carbon dioxide
emissions will be almost imperceptible amidst the world’s huge and
rapidly increasing levels of both. In fact, the World Resources
Institute says 59 nations are already planning to build more than 1,200
new coal-fired power plants – on top of what those nations and Germany,
Poland and other developed nations are already building

However,
hydrocarbon use has also helped raise atmospheric concentrations from
about 320 ppm carbon dioxide to nearly 400 ppm (from 0.032% of the
atmosphere to 0.040%). The Obama Administration (wrongly) regards this
slight increase as “dangerous.” That is an erroneous, shortsighted
perception that improperly ignores the enormous benefits of this
increase in plant-fertilizing CO2.

Carbon dioxide truly is “the
gas of life,” the basis of all life on Earth. It spurs plant growth, and
enhances agricultural productivity. Plants use it to produce the
organic matter out of which they construct their tissues, which
subsequently become sources of fiber, building materials and food for
humans and animals.

Carbon
dioxide benefits overwhelmingly outweigh the SCC – no matter which
government reports are used. In fact, any estimate for “social costs of
carbon” is hidden amid the statistical noise of CO2 benefits.

Prodigious
amounts of fossil fuels are required to sustain future economic growth,
especially in developing countries. If the world is serious about
increasing economic growth, reducing energy deprivation, and increasing
or maintaining living standards, fossil fuels are absolutely essential.
Their benefits far outweigh any conceivable costs, and will continue to
do so for decades to come.

These undeniable facts must form the
foundation for energy, environmental and regulatory policies. Otherwise,
regulations will be far worse than the harms they supposedly redress.

This
week, Secretary of State John Kerry announced to a group of Indonesian
students that global warming was "perhaps the world's most fearsome
weapon of mass destruction." He added, "Because of climate change, it's
no secret that today Indonesia is ... one of the most vulnerable
countries on Earth. It's not an exaggeration to say that the entire way
of life that you live and love is at risk."

Meanwhile, Hollywood
prepared to drop a new blockbuster based on the biblical story of Noah.
The film, directed by Darren Aronofsky, centers on the story of the
biblical character who built an ark after God warned him that humanity
would be destroyed thanks to its sexual immorality and violent
transgressions. The Hollywood version of the story, however, has God
punishing humanity not for actual sin, but for overpopulation and global
warming -- an odd set of sins, given God's express commandments in
Genesis 1:28 to "be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it."

This
weird perspective on sin -- the notion that true sin is not sin, but
that consumerism is -- is actually nothing new. In the 1920s, the left
warned of empty consumerism with the fire and brimstone of Jonathan
Edwards; Sinclair Lewis famously labeled the American middle class
"Babbitts" -- characters who cared too much about buying things.

In
his novel of the same name, Lewis sneered of his bourgeois antihero,
"He had enormous and poetic admiration, though very little
understanding, of all mechanical devices. They were his symbols of truth
and beauty." Lewis wrote, through the voice of his radical character
Doane, that consumerism has created "standardization of thought, and of
course, the traditions of competition. The real villains of the piece
are the clean, kind, industrious Family Men who use every known brand of
trickery and cruelty to insure the prosperity of their cubs. The worst
thing about these fellows it that they're so good and, in their work at
least, so intelligent."

Lewis, of course, was a socialist. So
were anti-consumerism compatriots like H.G. Wells, H.L. Mencken and
Herbert Croly. And their brand of leftism was destined to infuse the
entire American left over the course of the 20th century. As Fred Siegel
writes in his new book, "The Revolt Against The Masses," this general
feeling pervaded the left during the 1950s, even as more Americans were
attending symphony concerts than ballgames, with 50,000 Americans per
year buying paperback version of classics. That's because if the left
were to recognize the great power of consumerism in bettering lives and
enriching culture, the left would have to become the right.

Of
course, consumerism is not an unalloyed virtue. Consumerism can be
utilized for hedonism. But it can also be utilized to make lives better,
offering more opportunity for spiritual development. It's precisely
this latter combination that the left fears, because if consumerism and
virtue are allied, there is no place left for the Marxist critique of
capitalism -- namely that capitalism makes people less compassionate,
more selfish, and ethically meager. And so consumerism must be severed
from virtue (very few leftists critique Americans' propensity for
spending cash on Lady Gaga concerts) so that it can be castigated as sin
more broadly.

In a world in which consumerism is the greatest of
all sins, America is the greatest of all sinners, which, of course, is
the point of the anti-consumerist critique from the left: to target
America. Global warming represents the latest apocalyptic consequence
threatened by the leftist gods for the great iniquity of buying things,
developing products, and competing in the global marketplace. And
America must be called to heel by the great preachers in Washington,
D.C., and Hollywood.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

While
announcing new fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks on
Tuesday, President Barack Obama said “unchecked” carbon pollution prior
to his administration’s efforts to raise fuel economy standards “was
having severe impacts on our weather.”“Carbon pollution was going
unchecked, which was having severe impacts on our weather,” Obama said
in a speech at a Safeway distribution center in Upper Marlboro, MD.

For
decades, fuel efficiency standards had been “stuck in neutral, even as
other kinds of technology leapt forward,” the president said. The
economy was “vulnerable to fluctuations in oil prices.”

“Every
time oil prices shot up, the economy got hurt. Our automakers were in
danger of being left in the dust by foreign automakers,” he said.

After
taking office, the Obama administration “set in motion the first ever
national policy aimed at both increasing gas mileage and decreasing gas
pollution for all new cars and trucks sold” in the U.S.

“Our
levels of dangerous carbon pollution that contributes to climate change
has actually gone down even as our production has gone up,” he said.

The
administration had set the goal of raising fuel economy standards to
35.5 miles per gallon for a new vehicle by 2016 – an increase of more
than eight miles per gallon over the average at the time.

Some automakers have already exceeded that goal, he said.

“Some
are already making cars that beat the target of nearly 55 miles per
gallon. They’ve got plug-in hybrids. They’ve got electric vehicles.
They’re taking advantage of the investments that the Recovery Act made
in American advances in battery technology, so cars are getting better,
and they’re getting more fuel efficient all the time,” Obama said.

The new goal: doubling the distance cars and light trucks can travel before needing to refuel.

“We’re
gonna double the distance our cars and light trucks can go on a gallon
of gas by 2025. We’re gonna double it, and that means – that’s big news –
because what it means is you got to fill up every two weeks instead of
every week, and that saves the typical family more than $8,000 at the
pump over time,” Obama said.

“I’m assuming you can use $8,000
that you’re not paying at the gas station, and in the process, it cuts
American oil consumption by 12 billion barrels,” he added.

“And
for anybody who said this couldn’t be done or that it would hurt the
American auto industry, the American auto industry sold more cars last
year than any time since 2007. And since we stepped in to help our
automakers retool, the American auto industry has created almost 425,000
new jobs,” he added.

The
Soil Association (SA), Britain's foremost organic food organisation, is
indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions of children because
of its ongoing opposition to Golden Rice, a leading environmentalist has
claimed.

Dr Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, has
accused the Soil Association -- which claims to be responsible for the
certification of around 70 percent of organic produce in the UK -- of
using "lies and scare tactics" and "anti-science extremism" in its
campaign against the "miracle" genetically-modified (GM) crop, Golden
Rice.

Golden Rice is modified to cure vitamin A deficiency, which
kills more than two million children each year, and causes another
500,000 to go blind.

But the Soil Association claims that Golden Rice is expensive, ineffective, unethical and potentially dangerous.

Moore
has vigorously rejected all these claims in a 5000-word rebuttal
published on his Allow Golden Rice Now website, where he states, "[The
Soil Association] have joined those extremist groups that are
responsible for prolonging the approval of Golden Rice. They would
sacrifice two million children per year on the altar of their ideology."

The
Soil Association claims that "Golden Rice is sadly a classic case of
misspent time and resources", whereas Moore responds that, "If Golden
Rice delivers as promised, and all indications are that it will, it will
be one of the most cost-effective cures for a major killer in history".

The
SA has also commented that Golden Rice "...is only treating the part of
the symptom, not the problem - poverty," to which Moore replied, "It is
surely better to live in poverty with a healthy immune system and the
sight in both eyes than it is to be blind or dead".

The
organisation, founded in 1946, may have a fairly modest annual budget of
£7 million, but its influence is huge. As Britain's leading organic
certification body it helps regulate a UK industry worth in excess of £2
billion, and influences a global market worth more than $50 billion.

It has warned that, "A key weapon is to advise parents, the key target audience, of the dangers of rice based diets".

Dr.
Moore, who often finds himself in disagreement with green
organisations, including the one he helped found, Greenpeace, said:
"This shows how misguided the Soil Association is. We are to warn people
who eat rice as their staple food of the "dangers of rice-based diets"?
All three and a half billion of them?"

He also attacked the SA's claim that "overdosing on beta-carotene has been linked to an increased cancer risk".

"The
Soil Association should be very ashamed to make this statement," Moore
wrote. "At first the anti-Golden Rice campaigners said there was not
enough beta-carotene in Golden Rice to help with the deficiency. Now
they say there could be too much?"

"Golden Rice is actually very
close to being ready for commercialisation. If it were not for the
unnecessarily onerous regulatory requirements - [partly the result of
hysterical anti-GM campaigning by NGOs like Greenpeace and the Soil
Association] - it would already be available."

"The campaign
against GM technology is a classic propaganda campaign based on fear of
the unknown. As Greenpeace has said of Golden Rice, 'there may be
unforeseen health issues'. 'Unforeseen' sounds scary, but it really
indicates that they know of nothing that could be harmful. And note the
tentative nature of 'may be'. Indeed there isn’t anything to the
campaign but fear tactics to raise cash contributions from well
intentioned, but misguided, supporters."

The full text of Moore's rebuttal can be read at the Allow Golden Rice Now website.

President Obama, supported by the Environmental Protection Agency,
is seeking to deprive America of the use of its enormous reserves of
coal in coal-fired plants that produce the electricity on which the
economy and all life in America depends.

This isn’t just a “war
on coal”, it is a war on America and one free market think tank, the
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) has been joined by six
major unions to ensure that the EPA’s proposed energy proposal, Mercury
and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule does not become a regulation that
they call “nothing less than industrial sabotage by regulatory means.”

The
EPA’s current regulations have resulted in the shut down over more than
150 coal-fired plants over the course of Obama’s first term and his
second represents a threat to everyone living in America. We are living
through one of the harshest winters in recent years and the 17-year-old
cooling cycle which the entire Earth is experiencing promises to last
decades.

Commenting on the proposed carbon pollution standards
for new power plants, Bonner R.Cohen, PhD, a CFACT Senior Policy Analyst
laid out the reasons why MATS has no basis whatever in science.

Any
regulation seeking to limit the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the
Earth’s atmosphere deliberately and deceptively ignores facts that
anyone can understand. Bonner spelled out the basic scientific facts,
but it is essential to keep in mind that CO2 is essential to all life on
Earth, providing the “food” that all vegetation depends.

"Current
concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are 400 parts per million
(ppm). Human activities in all their forms account for 4% of that total.
The United States is responsible for 3% of that 4%, all the rest of the
CO2 in the atmosphere (96% of the total) comes from purely natural
causes, such as volcanoes, undersea venting, animal fluctuation, etc.,”
said Cohen.

“The total U.S. contribution to atmospheric CO2 is
one tenth of 1% or 00.1%. This 0.01% includes the CO2 that is emitted
every time one of the approximately 315 million Americans opens his or
her mouth to speak, cry, or engage in any verbal activity.” There are
seven billion people on Earth contributing CO2 just by exhaling.

“The
contribution of coal-fired plants to the U.S., much less global CO2
emissions, is so miniscule that it cannot be measured with any degree of
accuracy. And the contribution of those entities targeted by the EPA to
the Earth’s climate also cannot be measured. Thus the EPA has
absolutely no way of saying how its proposed regulations will affect the
climate.”

The EPA is moving toward imposing these baseless
regulations despite the fact that China and India have been building
coal-fired plants to provide their nations with the energy to expand and
compete in the global marketplace. China’s CO2 emission increased by
167% between 1999 and 2009, while the U.S., the second largest emitter
of carbon dioxide, emitted 17% over the same 10-year period.

According
to an analysis by Climate Central, from 2005-2009, China added
coal-fired electricity capacity that is equivalent to the entire U.S.
fleet. From 2010-2013, it added half the coal generation of the entire
U.S. again. Powered by cheap and abundant coal, China’s economy has
lifted 600 million people out of abject poverty and into the middle
class over the last two decades.

Carbon dioxide, however, is
vital for all life Earth despite decades of lies about it by
environmentalists falsely claiming it warms the Earth. It is the food
that all vegetation requires in the same way all animal life requires
oxygen.

“For EPA to impose carbon-pollution standards that by
design will make the introduction of new coal-fired power plants all but
impossible is to adapt a policy that by design will drive up the cost
of electricity by limiting America’s sources of power,” said Cohen. “The
EPA is engaging in a complete fabrication, one that will put an end to
an industry that supplies the U.S. with 37% of its electricity.” When
Obama took office in 2009, coal-fired plants were providing nearly 50%
of U.S. electrical energy.

This is a criminal act against all
Americans and one based on the totally false claims about “global
warming”, now called “climate change.” The President, during the recent
State of the Union speech lied when he said that science was “settled.”

CFACT
is not alone in opposing the Obama administration’s attack on the
provision of energy. Six unions are petitioning the Senate to hold
hearings on the EPA coal plant rules. The International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers and five other unions have sent a letter to top
senators on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The
United Mine Workers, Boilermakers and Utility Workers said that the
proposed rules would result in the closing of 56 gigawatts of coal-fired
generation and the loss of approximately 250,000 jobs. These unions
have been pushing back against the Obama administration for years at
this point.

In 2011 the Congressional Research Service reported
that America’s reserves of coal are unsurpassed, accounting for more
than 28% of the world’s coal. It estimated that U.S. recoverable coal
reserves were approximately 262 billion tons—not including massive, cut
difficult to access Alaskan reserves.

The U.S. consumes around
1.2 billion tons of coal a year and our coal reserves add up to
centuries of coal use which the White House and the EPA is seeking to
deny to all Americans.

If the White House and the EPA is
permitted to implement the MATS regulation the economy will dramatically
decline. Life in America will resemble that of third world nations. It
is entirely based on lies.

IT’S
almost impossible to view the news anymore without seeing something
negative related to global warming, overpopulation or environmental
degradation of the planet. The facts speak for themselves. Pollution is
rampant in many cities. Entire forests are being cut down. And the human
species is adding over 200,000 new people a day to the world.
Environmental scientists have warned for years that the human race is
dramatically affecting the planet and its ecosystems. Humans are
changing the climate of Earth, consuming all its finite resources, and
causing the disappearance of over 10,000 species a year.

Despite
this, a growing number of futurists, many who are transhumanists —
people who aim to move beyond the human being using science and
technology — aren’t worried. While New York City, Boston and Miami may
be partially underwater by 2100, many futurists don’t plan to be around
in the flesh by then. And if they are, they’ll have the technology to
walk on water. In fact, many futurists believe that before the end of
this century, they will become cyborgs, sentient robots, virtual avatars
living inside computers, or space travellers journeying on starships in
far-off solar systems.

This sounds like science fiction to the
general public. However, imagine if you had told someone in 1914 that in
2014 much of the world’s population would have access to making video
conference calls on handheld wireless devices to people on the other
side of the planet. No one would’ve believed you. After all, how could
arrangements of radio waves travel almost instantaneously around the
planet and perfectly mirror multiple conversations on the screen of a
tiny handheld machine?

What many environmentalists, journalists
and politicians fail to consider when assessing the future is how
quickly technological innovation is growing. The future is coming much
faster than people realise.

“According to Moore’s Law,” says
Kevin Russell, a futurist and Executive Director of the online magazine
Serious Wonder, “the number of transistors on integrated circuits
doubles every 18-24 months. Technological advancements generally evolve
at the same speed too. The improvement is exponential.”

While
Moore’s Law may not hold out to be true indefinitely and cannot be used
to address all aspects of technological growth, the point that tech
innovation is soon to be at Olympic-like speed is well-noted.

As
mammals with brains that haven’t biologically evolved much in the last
100,000 years, it’s hard for many of us to fathom what exponential
scientific and technological growth really means. Our brains are wired
to perceive life as it occurs, moment to moment. We’re very good at
recognising and jumping away from a poisonous snake in the grass, but
not so good at understanding choices and their consequences that take
place over a quarter-century. Nonetheless, graphs that chart scientific
progress do not lie. We are entering a phase where our technological
innovation will spike and continue until we likely reach a Singularity.

This
spike of technological growth will bring about a paradigm shift in
human existence. Globally, there are dozens of companies and
universities working on how to control robotic limbs and parts with
brain waves. Already, the U.S. military is successfully experimenting
with mind-controlled fighter jets. Within a few years, humans will begin
attempting to download their first thoughts into computers. Soon after,
a software interface will bring to life our authentic virtual
personalities. Eventually, especially with the help of artificial
intelligence, we will complete a full upload of our brains, and our
minds and its thoughts will freely move in and out of machines. We will
be digital avatars of our biological selves.

All this begs the
question: Will this new phase of human existence require as many
resources from the planet as we are currently using? Will we continue to
eat food? Breathe air? Depend on water? Procreate? The answer is
probably not. There is a time coming in this century when populations of
humans will no longer be so dependent on continued usage of the Earth’s
finite bounty. Achieving a sustainable harmony with nature, while
politically correct in today’s world, may quickly lose relevance. The
fact that so many people are worried about using up all the planet’s
fossil fuels will soon become silly.

Many environmental and
social scientists should realise that forecasts looking forward 50 years
are likely to be embarrassingly wrong if they’re only focusing on
humans. In the future, many people will be transhuman. Entire new forms
of being will be created to fulfil needs and desires of our advancing
species. To make accurate forecasts, a transhumanist perspective — not a
Homo sapiens one — will be necessary. The entire population of the
world and all its thoughts, experiences, and forms may one day fit into
something the size of Stanley Kubrick’s black monolith in the movie
2001: A Space Odyssey. That is where we’re heading and how dramatically
the species will change.

Until then, the real dangers of human
civilisation lurk in those who want to hinder or over-regulate progress.
Science and technology have brought us a far better world, scoring
numerous victories for humanity. Globally, democracy is more widespread
than ever, poverty is declining, and the species is healthier and living
longer according to various recent reports by the United Nations.

There
are probably zero futurists who feel good about damaging our beautiful
planet. However, many of them realise that the benefit of the species’
rapid evolutionary ascent outweighs the harm progress is causing to
Earth. Our planet is strong; it can handle climate change and an
expanding human population while our species prepares for the
transhumanist age. The evolutionary outcome of humanity will be better
for turning a blind eye on Mother Earth. Exponential technological
growth, increased prosperity from globalisation, and maintaining world
peace are the critical issues of the future, not global warming,
overpopulation or environmental degradation.

North
Carolina Republican Gov. Pat McCory said Sunday on CBS' "Face the
Nation" that he feels "there has always been climate change."

"I
feel there has always been climate change. The debate is really how much
of it is manmade and how much will it cost to have any impact on
climate change," McCrory told host Bob Schieffer during a segment on the
snowstorm that has paralyzed most of the East Coast.

Over
100,000 people lost power in the latest snowstorm to hit North Carolina,
McCrory said. Two major snowstorms hit six major metropolitan
areas in the state within a two-week period. There were at least
six fatalities - including two Good Samaritans who were struck and
killed by a drunk driver, McCrory said. He signed emergency orders
during both snow storms.

McCrory said while he believes in
climate change, he thinks the focus should be on cleaning up the
environment in a cost-effective way.

"My main argument is let's
clean up the environment. And as a mayor and now as a governor, I'm
spending my time cleaning our air, cleaning our water and cleaning the
ground," the governor said.

"And I think that's where the
argument should be on both the left and the right. And if that has an
impact on climate change, good, but I think that's where the real
argument should be, is doing what we can to clean up our environment,"
McCrory added.

"But we also have to look for cost-effective ways
to do it because, as a governor, we're walking that fine line of keeping
our environment clean but also continuing the economic recovery and
making sure things like power are affordable for the consumer," he
added.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has played down the role of climate change in the drought ravaging much of inland eastern Australia.

And
he has indicated that the coming relief package for farmers will not
take into account future increases in extreme weather events predicted
in a new report by scientists.

At the end of a two-day tour
taking in Bourke and Broken Hill in NSW and Longreach in Queensland, Mr
Abbott said the present period of extreme heat and dry conditions –
broken in part during his weekend visit – was not unusual for Australia.

"If you look at the records of Australian agriculture going
back 150 years, there have always been good times and bad, tough and
lush times," Mr Abbott said.

"This is not a new thing in
Australia. "As the seasons have changed, climatic variation has
been a constant here in Australia."

Mr Abbott, who has previously
dismissed a link between climate change and October’s early-season
bushfires in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, ruled out taking the issue
of a warming planet into consideration when preparing his drought-aid
package for cabinet later this week.

"Farmers ought to be able to deal with things expected every few years," Mr Abbott said.

"Once
you start getting into very severe events – one-in-20, 50, 100-year
events – that’s when I think people need additional assistance because
that is ... beyond what a sensible business can be expected to plan
for."

A new report by the Climate Council – formed with public
funding from the ashes of the Climate Commission, which the Abbott
government abolished – says heatwaves are becoming more frequent, more
intense and lasting longer.

It says Melbourne, Canberra and
Adelaide were already experiencing the number of annual hot days that
had been forecast for 2030 in the first decade of the century.

The
report, by Professors Will Steffen and Lesley Hughes and UNSW
researcher Sarah Perkins, said: "Record hot days and warm nights are
also expected to increase across Australia over the coming decades.

"For
both northern and southern Australia, one-in-20-year extreme hot days
are expected to occur every two to five years by the middle of the
century."

Records melt

Those three cities, as it happens, have each broken heat records this summer.

Adelaide
has had 13 days of 40 degrees or more, beating the previous record set
more than a century ago, of 11 such days. Melbourne has hda seven days
above 40 degrees, the most in any calendar year just six weeks in, while
Canberra has had 20 days above 35 degrees, the most for any summer, the
Bureau of Meteorology said.

The Climate Council report
highlights the effect that increased heat is expected to have on
agriculture, including reduced crop yields and lower livestock
productivity.

The three regions Mr Abbott visited all had
their hottest six-month period between August and January, with rainfall
as little as one-fifth of normal levels.

Cabinet is expected to consider an extra $280 million in low-interest loans for farmers, among other measures.

Touring
the Mount Gipps cattle and sheep station north of Broken Hill on
Monday, he said there was "a world of difference" between
companies seeking handouts and farmers needing help to get through the
drought.

Graziers have been offloading their livestock throughout
much of inland eastern Australia as they battle to cope with drought
and declining feedstock.

John Cramp, the owner of Mount
Gipps, said the recent extreme heat in his region had seen his
cattle remain near their water troughs rather than go in search of
remaining grass.

"They won’t leave their water, they won’t poke
out and get some feed," Mr Cramp said, adding that in his view "climates
have always changed".

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

19 February, 2014

Why The Met Office Has Hung Its Chief Scientist Out To Dry

But
nobody seems to be asking the old fool how climate change could be
causing Britain's wild weather when there has been no climate change for
many years -- JR

Last week the Met Office and the Centre for
Ecology and Hydrology issued an admirable joint report on the floods
and their possible connection to climate change, concluding that it is
not possible to make such a link. ‘As yet’, it said, ‘there is no
definitive answer on the possible contribution of climate change to the
recent storminess, rainfall amounts and the consequent flooding’.

In
many ways this was not much of a surprise, since only the wild activist
fringe among the climate science community have tended to try to make
the link in the past.

Taking such a level-headed view, the Met
Office report represented a valuable opportunity to bring some calm to
an increasingly frenzied debate over the flooding. However,
unfortunately for everyone, the good work was all undone by the Met
Office’s own chief scientist, Professor Dame Julia Slingo. Newly
ennobled in the New Year’s honours list, Slingo seems to have found the
temptation to put a global warming spin on everything that crosses her
desk too much, and she blurted out to journalists the extraordinary
claim that ‘all the evidence suggests there is a link to climate
change’.

Her position was undoubtedly a big problem for the Met
Office, directly contradicting her own organisation’s report and the
views of the scientific mainstream. It was therefore perhaps inevitable
that these differences would be picked up in the media. Over the
weekend, the Mail on Sunday reported a senior climatologist, Professor
Mat Collins of Exeter University, as saying that:-

‘There is no
evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in
the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is
outside our knowledge.’

As the newspaper pointed out, there was an obvious discrepancy with what Slingo was telling the press.

On
the grapevine I hear that climate scientists are privately furious with
Slingo; their profession has had a rough ride in recent years and
efforts to restore its battered reputation are not to be cheaply
squandered. The signs are that climatologists have hung Slingo out to
dry. Last night, Collins and the Met Office issued a much-anticipated
response to the Mail on Sunday article. This made a great deal of global
warming having increased the water content of the atmosphere, leading
to increased rainfall, a surprising point given that as recently as 2012
Slingo had told Parliament that global warming was ‘loading the dice’
in favour of cold, dry winters. It also made a strong sales pitch about
the potential of climate models to predict increases in storminess in
future.

But it was what it did not say that was most significant.
For while it artfully implied that the Mail on Sunday had got things
wrong, in fact it went on to show only that the original report was
consistent with Collins’ mainstream views. Regarding Slingo’s outlandish
claims about ‘all the evidence’ supporting a link between the floods
and global warming, there was only an ominous silence.

How
did global warming discussions end up hinging on what's happening with
polar bears, unverifiable predictions of what will happen in a hundred
years, and whether people are "climate deniers" or "global warming
cultists?" If this is a scientific topic, why aren't we spending more
time discussing the science involved? Why aren't we talking about the
evidence and the actual data involved? Why aren't we looking at the
predictions that were made and seeing if they match up to the results?
If this is such an open and shut case, why are so many people who care
about science skeptical? Many Americans have long since thought that the
best scientific evidence available suggested that man wasn't causing
any sort of global warming. However, now, we can go even further and
suggest that the planet isn't warming at all.

1) There hasn't
been any global warming since 1997: If nothing changes in the next year,
we're going to have kids who graduate from high school who will have
never seen any "global warming" during their lifetimes. That's right;
the temperature of the planet has essentially been flat for 17 years.
This isn't a controversial assertion either. Even the former Director of
the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, Phil
Jones, admits that it's true. Since the planet was cooling from
1940-1975 and the upswing in temperature afterward only lasted 23 years,
a 17 year pause is a big deal. It also begs an obvious question: How
can we be experiencing global warming if there's no actual "global
warming?"

2) There is no scientific consensus that global warming
is occurring and caused by man: Questions are not decided by
"consensus." In fact, many scientific theories that were once widely
believed to be true were made irrelevant by new evidence. Just to name
one of many, many examples, in the early seventies, scientists believed
global cooling was occurring. However, once the planet started to warm
up, they changed their minds. Yet, the primary "scientific" argument for
global warming is that there is a "scientific consensus" that it's
occurring. Setting aside the fact that's not a scientific argument, even
if that ever was true (and it really wasn't), it's certainly not true
anymore. Over 31,000 scientists have signed on to a petition saying
humans aren't causing global warming. More than 1000 scientists signed
on to another report saying there is no global warming at all. There are
tens of thousands of well-educated, mainstream scientists who do not
agree that global warming is occurring at all and people who share their
opinion are taking a position grounded in science.

3) Arctic ice
is up 50% since 2012: The loss of Arctic ice has been a big talking
point for people who believe global warming is occurring. Some people
have even predicted that all of the Arctic ice would melt by now because
of global warming. Yet, Arctic ice is up 50% since 2012. How much
Arctic ice really matters is an open question since the very limited
evidence we have suggests that a few decades ago, there was less ice
than there is today, but the same people who thought the drop in ice was
noteworthy should at least agree that the increase is important as
well.

4) Climate models showing global warming have been wrong
over and over: These future projections of what global warming will do
to the planet have been based on climate models. Essentially, scientists
make assumptions about how much of an impact different factors will
have; they guess how much of a change there will be and then they
project changes over time. Unfortunately, almost all of these models
showing huge temperature gains have turned out to be wrong.

Former
NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer says that climate models used by
government agencies to create policies “have failed miserably.” Spencer
analyzed 90 climate models against surface temperature and satellite
temperature data, and found that more than 95 percent of the models
“have over-forecast the warming trend since 1979, whether we use their
own surface temperature dataset (HadCRUT4), or our satellite dataset of
lower tropospheric temperatures (UAH).”There's an old saying in
programming that goes, "Garbage in, garbage out." In other words, if the
assumptions and data you put into the models are faulty, then the
results will be worthless. If the climate models that show a dire impact
because of global warming aren't reliable -- and they're not -- then
the long term projections they make are meaningless.

5)
Predictions about the impact of global warming have already been proven
wrong: The debate over global warming has been going on long enough that
we've had time to see whether some of the predictions people made about
it have panned out in the real world. For example, Al Gore predicted
all the Arctic ice would be gone by 2013. In 2005, the Independent ran
an article saying that the Artic had entered a death spiral.

Scientists
fear that the Arctic has now entered an irreversible phase of warming
which will accelerate the loss of the polar sea ice that has helped to
keep the climate stable for thousands of years....The greatest fear is
that the Arctic has reached a “tipping point” beyond which nothing can
reverse the continual loss of sea ice and with it the massive land
glaciers of Greenland, which will raise sea levels dramatically.Meanwhile,
Arctic ice is up 50% since 2012. James Hansen of NASA fame predicted
that the West Side Highway in New York would be under water by now
because of global warming.

If the climate models and the
predictions about global warming aren't even close to being correct,
wouldn't it be more scientific to reject hasty action based on faulty
data so that we can further study the issue and find out what's really
going on?

Are energy efficient homes making us ILL? Toxic mould caused by poor air circulation could trigger 'sick building syndrome'

Energy
efficient buildings are an important part of tackling the world’s
energy crisis. But while these structures can keep draughts out,
they also have a hidden threat lurking within.

Deep within their crevices and corners, green buildings are susceptible to trapping humid air in which toxic mould can spread

The
problem, according to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), affects
between 30 and 50 per cent of new or refurbished buildings. A
number of these homes have become ghost buildings after the damp seeped
in and destroyed furniture and belongings.

The Alberta Court of
Appeal in Canada, for instance, has been abandoned since 2001, after
renovations to 87-year-old building went wrong.

When the
renovated building reopened, according to Umair Irfan at ClimateWire,
judges and attorneys complained of fatigue, irritated lungs, and watery
eyes.

Mould is a type of fungus - thousands of types are released
at different times of the year, though autumn is the peak time for the
release of the spores.

Up to four per cent of the population is
thought to react to mould spores - with as many as one in ten people
with allergies such as hay fever and eczema affected.

‘They
couldn't figure out what was wrong,’ Tang Lee, a professor of
architecture in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of
Calgary told Climate Wire.

Air quality samples revealed that the
problem came from mould growing inside the walls. The new
airtight building trapped moisture breeding toxic mould.

Professor
Lee said that the situation is a stark reminder that even in pursuit of
saving energy, human health should be a major concern in designing and
retrofitting the enclosed spaces where people spend most of their lives.

‘It's not just making it look pretty, and it's not just making it more efficient,’ she said.

The World Health Organisation has termed what has happened in Canada and elsewhere as sick building syndrome (SBS).

According
to the HSE, the most common symptoms of SBS are headaches, lethargy and
poor concentration, skin irritation, dry itchy eyes and a congested
nose.

Mould spores can also be dangerous for some asthmatics.
Around two-thirds of the more serious life-threatening asthma attacks
are believed to be triggered by mould.

Mould may also be linked
to Parkinson's disease. A recent U.S. study found a compound given off
by mould reduced levels of the brain chemical dopamine, a process which
causes Parkinson's symptoms, although more research is needed.

The article by
Lachlan Markay reported on federal energy regulators who predict:
“Projected retirements of coal-fired generating capacity in [EIA’s
annual Energy Outlook report] include retirements above and beyond those
reported to EIA as planned by power plant owners and operators.”

Markay
notes that, “A key factor in those retirements is a new Environmental
Protection Agency regulation on emissions of toxins from coal-fired
power plants. Known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule,
it is expected to dramatically increase financial pressure on the coal
sector.”

Isn’t this good news? After all, we have been
inundated with reports on how bad coal is, to the point that supposedly
well-educated Seattle, Wash. residents fear coal trains running through
their town due to environmentalist stoked worries about the previously
unknown second-hand black lung disease.

What could possibly go wrong with administration policies that pander to this anti-coal barrage?

After
all, we are investing billions of dollars in renewable energy
sources. Why would anyone be concerned that more coal fired
electricity generation plants are going to be shut down than even the
government anticipated?

Here’s why.

In 2012, 37 percent of
all electricity in the nation was generated by coal fired plants
according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA). By
comparison, solar power made up 0.1 percent, and all renewable energy
not including hydro-electric made up around 5 percent of our total
electricity production.

Consider that in 2008, coal accounted 49
percent of all electricity. The rapid reduction in coal fired
electricity generation is only partially being replaced by an increase
in natural gas fired plants ensuring that less electricity will be
available for U.S. consumers in 2016 than today.

Add to this
equation news reports from earlier in the winter that many utilities
were struggling to meet the demand for electricity due to the cold
weather. The natural emphasis of the stories focused upon
the increased cost of electricity due to the high demand for power, and
this is a guaranteed outgrowth of the EPA’s continuing war on coal fired
utilities.

As the nation’s ability to generate electricity
diminishes, the demand for power continues to increase taxing the
electrical grid in ways our nation has not seen in generations.

The
EIA itself reports the in 2012, more than 3 percent of coal fired
capacity was lost due to closures and it anticipates another 20 percent
of this electric generation capacity will cease to exist by 2020 largely
due to EPA regulations.

To put this into perspective, in a time
of rising electrical demand, our nation will be losing 6 percent of its
total electric generation capabilities. Of course a portion of
this will be made up through conversion to burning natural gas, but the
loss of coal fired electricity will create a shortage, much higher
prices and blackouts during critical, high use times.

A nation
that prides itself on being the most modern in the world, won’t be able
to flip a switch and turn on the lights due to the Obama
Administration’s war on coal, and those in more economically depressed
areas will be forced to choose between expensive heat or air
conditioning and putting food on their table.

That is the reality
of the war on coal and cheap energy as a whole. A war guaranteed
to create brownouts, blackouts and families shivering under blankets in
the dark.

But the most damaging impacts won’t be until a few
years after Obama has left office and voters will blame the President
who has to clean up his mess, rather than acknowledging just who turned
off the lights.

RUSH:
Sometimes it gets so depressing. I'm reading my tech blogs.
It's my hobby. Folks, I'd love to call these out by name, but
believe me it wouldn't be worth it. It doesn't matter. I
know you're not going to go read them anyway. But there is this
one blog comprised of people who think they are engineers and
scientists. They're 24, 25 years old -- maybe in their early 30s -- and
it's just classic reading them.

They are nothing more than the
product of the propaganda they've been taught at every level of
education. For example: Global warming. "It is
undeniable. It is as real -- man-made global warming is as real --
as the sun coming up," and apparently, I guess, one of the Sunday shows
had a debate between Marsha Blackburn and Bill Nye, "the Science Guy,"
who is not a science guy. Bill Nye, apparently when talking about
the North Pole, held up a picture of the South Pole.

But anyway,
he believes in all this gobbledygook, and it's a hoax. Democrats
are reviving it, by the way. Kerry, Obama, they're reviving it just like
they revive minimum wage and it gets their base going. It expands
the role of government. But there's absolutely no evidence. It's a
total hoax. They're now focusing on the drought in California as
part of global warming. It's ridiculous. The reason there's a
drought in the Central Valley is because of water policy.

They
have simply diverted water from human beings to animals, endangered
species! They've been doing this in California since I don't know when,
the '70s and '80s. That's how long they've been doing it, and that's why
there's a drought. That's why there's an agricultural crisis in
the Central Valley. It's not because of global warming. It's
because of water policy. California doesn't have enough water
naturally.

They've got to take the runoff from the snowmelt,
Hetch Hetchy in San Francisco. Southern California doesn't get enough
rain; it's got to be diverted down there. Southern California,
ditto. They're diverting water to save snail darters and things
like that. They've been doing it for years. But none of that
is given the time of day among these young, hip, know-it-alls. I
read this and I want to howl. If I had a chance to talk to these guys,
how in the world would I get through to them?

It's a challenge.

It's something I ponder, 'cause I think one of these days it's probably going to happen somewhere.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:
So, anyway, I didn't watch this, I guess it was Meet the
Depressed. Bill Nye, the Science Guy, was debating Marsha
Blackburn, a congresswoman from Tennessee, about global warming.
Look, those of you who listen here regularly know that the whole hoax
has been exposed thanks to the treasure trove of e-mails leaked from the
University of East Anglia in the UK. All of the data faked.
All of the charts rigged, from ancient times to the current. Any
data that showed there was no warming when there should have been was
suppressed. Any data that did not show sufficient warming when
they wanted it to was also suppressed and rearranged. I mean, they
just made it up.

Now, it's long since been forgotten, but at
the time everybody paying attention realized that some of the key
players in the man-made global warming argument are involved in
this. I mean, it's just ridiculous. You go back, I remember
watching in 1985 This Week with David Brinkley, and there's this
scientist on named Oppenheimer. And he's warning everybody
(paraphrasing), "We got 20 years. Actually not 1985. It was
1980. We got 20 years. Now, we can't conclusively say that
the earth is warming, and we can't conclusively say that man is causing
it. But we've only got 20 years, and we must err on the side of
assuming we are causing it and it is getting warmer. Because if we
miss it, we're going to totally blow our effort to fix it in 20 years."

Well, I'm watching that and I'm totally incredulous, just on
the basis of my common sense. A, you're telling me that you can't
prove it, we don't know it, but we better act as though it's happening
because if we don't, in 20 years it's going to be what, disaster?
It's going to get so bad we can't fix it. Well, if you can't prove
in 1980 that we're causing it, then what the hell are we going to do to
stop it? That was only one year after Newsweek had run a cover on
the coming global cooling, a new ice age. One year later it
becomes global warming.

And, of course, the guy is calling for
massive tax increases, the United Nations to be involved, the creation
of a worldwide agency to police developed countries to make sure they
didn't pollute more than their share. It's classic what was
happening. An absolute total hoax that they couldn't prove.
And even now, look it, I've taken you through this. I'm not going
to waste your time going through it anymore. My point is, so I'm
reading my little tech blog, and Bill Nye apparently in this debate with
Marsha Blackburn said something innocuous as everybody knows that the
earth is warming and that man is causing it. They just took that
quote and the little blog post: Thank you. Thank you, Bill
Nye. No, everybody doesn't agree with it.

Anyway, that
constituted debate victory for these guys. And I think about this
in the terms of we're going to have to find a way to permeate the minds
of these young people who have been propagandized and who want to
believe that there's disaster and imminent danger at every turn.
People get caught up in that. It excites them. But then
there's also vanity, this silly notion that we're causing it. And
then the doubly silly notion that we can stop it. It's so
absurd. When you just stop to think about it, it's absurd to
believe what they are teaching, which is that progress, human progress
is destroying a planet created by God and placing us on it for the
express purpose of having dominion over it. They don't believe in
creation or God, many of them, is one of the things.

It
was out with the Labor Party and in with the Liberal Party in the
Australian elections last September (translation: the government
switched over from six years of progressive dominance to their version
of conservatism).

Part of Prime Minister Tony Abbot’s campaign
platform was cutting government spending and taking a more reality-based
stance on the country’s green commitments (including a deeply unpopular
carbon tax), and he immediately started to make good on both of those
promises by getting rid of the country’s Climate Commission and freezing
renewables funding (not to mention his new government’s suggestion as
to where the United Nations could stick their latest attempt to rope
developed countries into a mutual impoverishment pact “global climate
treaty”).

Now, the government is moving forward on reevaluating
the economic wisdom of their mandatory renewable energy target (RET),
much to the chagrin of both Australian and global greens. Via Reuters:

The
target to ensure Australia generates 20 percent of its electricity from
renewable sources in 2020 has been a boon to the nation’s wind and
solar producers, but has been blamed by the conservative Coalition
government for increasing power prices.

“In particular, the
review will consider the contribution of the RET in reducing emissions,
its impact on electricity prices and energy markets, as well as its
costs and benefits for the renewable energy sector, the manufacturing
sector and Australian households,” Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane said
in a statement. …

Macfarlane said the outcome of the review was
not set, though Environment Minister Greg Hunt last month proposed to
delay the implementation of the target by five years. …

Green
groups in Australia saw the appointment of Dick Warburton, a former
Reserve Bank board member who has expressed doubt that carbon emissions
cause climate change, as a clear sign that the government’s intention is
to weaken or remove the target.

Which is probably a pretty good
idea. The greens doth protest that weakening the target will ease
investment in renewables and result in the country using more coal for
electricity generation — but funnily enough, Germany’s very similar
mandated energy targets of the past few years have in fact directly
resulted in the country turning to coal for power generation, and a
colossal waste of taxpayer money and loss of business competitiveness
besides.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

18 February, 2014

Mann and the Oxburgh Panel

The
Mann libel case has been attracting increasing commentary, including
from people outside the climate community. Integral to Mann’s litigation
are representations that he was “investigated” by 6-9 investigations,
all of which supposedly gave him “exonerations” on wide-ranging counts,
including “scientific misconduct”, “fraud”, “academic fraud”, “data
falsification”, “statistical manipulation”, “manipulation of data” and
even supposed findings that his work was “properly conducted an fairly
presented”. Mann also represented that these investigations were widely
covered in international and national media and thus known to Steyn and
the other defendants.

In today’s post, I’ll look closely at the
Oxburgh panel, one of the investigations cited in Mann’s pleadings.
However, contrary to the claims in Mann’s litigation, not only did the
Oxburgh panel not exonerate Mann, at their press conference, Oxburgh
panelist David Hand, then President of the Royal Statistical Society,
made very disparaging and critical comments about Mann’s work,
describing it as based on “inappropriate” statistics that led to
“exaggerated” results. These comments were widely reported in
international media, later covered in a CEI article that, in turn, was
reported by National Review. Moreover, information obtained from FOI in
the UK a couple of years ago shows that Mann objected vehemently to
criticism from Oxburgh panelist, which he characterized as a “rogue
opinion” and unsuccessfully sought a public apology.

Mann’s claim
that the Oxburgh panel “exonerated” Mann on counts ranging from
scientific misconduct to statistical manipulation to proper conduct and
fair presentation of results has no more validity than his claim to have
been awarded a Nobel prize for his supposedly seminal work
“document[ing] the steady rise in surface temperatures during the 20th
Century and the steep increase in measured temperatures since the
1950s.”

Horror at the world's largest solar farm days after it opens as it is revealed panels are SCORCHING birds that fly over them

Environmentalists
have hit out at a giant new solar farm in the Mojave Desert as mounting
evidence reveals birds flying through the extremely hot 'thermal flux'
surrounding the towers are being scorched.

After years of
regulatory tangles around the impact on desert wildlife, the Ivanpah
Solar Electric Generating System opened on Thursday but environmental
groups say the nearly 350,000 gigantic mirrors are generating 1000
degree Fahrenheit temperatures which are killing and singeing birds.

According
to compliance documents released by developer BrightSource Energy last
year, dozens of birds were found injured at the site during the building
stage.

State and federal regulators are currently conducting a
two-year study of the Ivanpah plant's effects on birds, with
environmental groups questioning the the value of cleaner power when
native wildlife is being killed or injured.

Larger
projects are on the way, but for now, Ivanpah is being described as a
marker for the United States' emerging solar industry.

While
solar power accounts for less than one per cent of the nation's power
output, thousands of projects from large, utility-scale plants to small
production sites are under construction or being planned, particularly
across the sun-drenched Southwest.

'The opening of Ivanpah is a
dawn of a new era in power generation in the United States,' said Rhone
Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade
group. 'We are going to be a global leader in solar generation.'

The plant's dedication comes as government continues to push for development of greener, cleaner power.

President
Barack Obama has mounted a second-term drive to combat climate change,
proposing first-ever limits on carbon pollution from new and existing
power plants.

His plan aims to help move the U.S. from a
coal-dependent past into a future fired by wind and solar power, nuclear
energy and natural gas.

According to U.S. Energy Information
Administration data, the cost of building and operating a new solar
thermal power plant over its lifetime is greater than generating natural
gas, coal or nuclear power.

It costs a conventional coal plant
$100, on average, to produce a megawatt-hour of power, but that figure
is $261 for solar thermal power, according to 2011 estimates.

The figures do not account for incentives such as state or federal tax credits that can impact the cost.

Ken
Johnson, a spokesman for the solar association, said in a statement
that solar systems have seen 'dramatic price declines' in the last few
years.

That's good for utilities in California, which must obtain
a third of their electricity from solar and other renewable sources by
2020.

The Ivanpah site, about 45 miles southwest of Las Vegas,
has virtually unbroken sunshine most of the year and is near
transmission lines that carry power to consumers.

Using
technology known as solar-thermal, more than 300,000 computer-controlled
mirrors roughly the size of a garage door reflect sunlight to boilers
atop 459-foot towers. The sun's power is used to heat water in the
boilers' tubes and make steam, which drives turbines to create
electricity.

While many people are familiar with rooftop solar,
or photovoltaic panels, 'these are a little bit different. This takes
the sun's rays and reflects them onto towers,' said NRG spokesman Jeff
Holland.

The plant can be a startling sight for drivers heading
toward Las Vegas along busy Interstate 15. Amid miles of rock and scrub,
its vast array of 7-by-10-foot mirrors creates the image of an ethereal
lake shimmering atop the desert floor. In fact, it's built on a dry
lakebed.

Google announced in 2011 that it would invest
$168million in the project. As part of its financing, BrightSource also
lined up $1.6billion in loans guaranteed by the U.S. Energy Department.

Ivanpah
can be seen as a success story and a cautionary tale, highlighting the
inevitable trade-offs between the need for cleaner power and the loss of
fragile, open land. The California Energy Commission concluded that
while the solar plant would impose 'significant impacts on the
environment ... the benefits the project would provide override those
impacts.'

Such disputes are likely to continue for years as more
companies seek to develop solar, wind and geothermal plants on land
treasured by environmentalists who also support the growth of renewable
energy. At issue is what is worth preserving and at what cost, as
California pushes to generate more electricity from renewable sources.

In
2012, the federal government established 17 'solar energy zones' in an
attempt to direct development to land it has identified as having fewer
wildlife and natural-resource obstacles. The zones comprise about 450
square miles in six states — California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado
and New Mexico.

The Western Watershed Project is continuing to
push a lawsuit against federal agencies that reviewed the Ivanpah
project. Its California director, Michael J. Connor, said alternatives
to the site were not considered and serious environmental impacts,
including fragmenting the tortoise population, were ignored.

'Do
we really need to have these giant plants first, or is it better to
generate solar power on people's roofs, the place it's going to be
used?' Connor asked. NRG did not respond to a request for comment
on the lawsuit.

Resch said a key issue for the industry will be
maintaining government policies that encourage development, including
tax credits for solar projects that are set to expire in 2016 and
government loan guarantees. 'The direct result of these policies is
projects like Ivanpah,' he said.

According to statistics compiled
by the Energy Department, the solar industry employs more than 140,000
Americans at about 6,100 companies, with employment increasing nearly 20
percent since the fall of 2012.

David Horsey has some very horsy comments below -- but very little truth

With
the American South locked in a deep freeze, you can be sure that plenty
of the folks suffering through the snow and ice storms are interpreting
the big chill as more proof that global warming is a hoax. “Warming?”
they scoff. “How can the planet be warming when it’s so darn cold?”

Put
very simply, here is what the predominant science says: Average global
temperatures have been rising in recent decades. Some of the warming
could be part of a natural cycle but, almost certainly, increased levels
of CO2 in the atmosphere caused by the burning of fossil fuels are a
pivotal factor in intensifying the phenomenon. The starkest evidence of
the temperature jump is the rapid melting of the polar ice caps and the
disappearance of the world’s glaciers. [Except that they're not and they're not]

Climate
scientists have said another key signal to watch for is a dramatic
shift in weather patterns. It is close to impossible to attribute any
single weather event – a snowstorm, a tornado, a hurricane – to
temperature rise, but, once extreme weather becomes normal and what has
been normal is no longer the norm, we will know we are in the throes of
change that is likely irreversible. {But extreme weeather is getting LESS normal]

It
sure looks like that could be where we are now. In just the last couple
of years, Americans have experienced epic tornados in the center of the
country, a monster storm that flooded Manhattan and ravaged New Jersey,
extended drought in the West that threatens agriculture and water
supplies, and an unprecedented number of wildfires in forests dried to
the flammability of kindling. This winter, frigid polar air has slipped
south, freezing much of the country, while in Alaska the season has been
unusually warm. There are piles of snow in Atlanta, but a dearth of
snow in the Sierra.

Extreme and unusual weather has been rolling in with more frequency all over the world [Except that it hasn't].
Governments in most major countries have moved beyond debate about
whether global warming is real. They are now busy making plans to deal
with the costly disruptions and lethal disasters that climate change has
already begun to bring.

Not in this major country, however.
Though the Republican nominee for president in 2008, Sen. John McCain,
declared that all the things that need to be done to cope with and
combat climate change would be worth doing even if warming was not
happening, the dominant voices in the party sharply disagree. They seem
fixated on loony conspiracy theories that imply that the scientists of
the world are spinning lies in order to destroy American capitalism.

Turns out the 'Evil' Koch Bros are only the 59th biggest donors in American politics. Can you guess who is number one?

Charles
and David Koch are the two most evil people in American politics,
right? We know that because Jane Mayer proved it with her landmark
"Covert Operations" tour de liberal force in 2010.

Well, it turns
out that Mayer's aim was off just a little, by like 58 slots on the
all-time biggest donors in American politics list, as compiled by
OpenSecrets.org.

OpenSecrets.org tallied the top donors in
federal elections between 1989 and 2014. Koch Industries -- privately
owned by the Evil Koch Bros -- is on the list, to be sure, but doesn't
appear until the 59th slot, with $18 million in donations, 90 percent of
which went to Republicans.

Unions, unions, unions

So who
occupies the 58 spots ahead of the Evil Koch Bros? Six of the top 10 are
... wait for it ... unions. They gave more than $278 million, with most
of it going to Democrats.

How much weather is being caused by climate change? Maybe 1 part in 1,000

by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

In
another silly pseudo-science rambling, the President’s science advisor,
John Holdren, has recently stated, “Weather practically everywhere is
being caused by climate change.”

Drought in California. Record snows in the East. It’s tempting for many to blame it all on our use of fossil fuels.

What Causes Weather?

Let’s
start with the basics. Weather is caused by energy imbalances,
primarily (1) between the solar heated surface of the Earth and the
atmosphere above it, and (2) between different geographic regions (e.g.
the tropics vs. high latitudes; the warm oceans versus cold continents
in winter).

These energy imbalances have associated temperature
differences, which in turn cause atmospheric circulation systems which
form clouds, precipitation, and high and low pressure systems.

How
much energy is involved? On a global basis the average rate of solar
energy absorbed by the Earth is estimated to be about 240 Watts per sq.
meter. In order for the climate system to stay at the same average
temperature year after year, the Earth has to lose exactly the same
amount of energy (240 W m-2) to outer space, in the form of infrared
energy.

It’s all about the energy…and especially about imbalances
in energy, which causes “weather” as the ocean and atmosphere seek to
reduce those imbalances. On a local basis, those imbalances can be tens
or even hundreds of watts per sq. meter.

So, How Much of Weather Could be Caused by Manmade Climate Change?Our
best estimate of how much the climate system has been perturbed from
energy balance comes from the slow warming of the oceans, which since
the 1950s equates to a 1 part in 1,000 energy imbalance (say, if 240 W
m-2 of solar energy has been absorbed on average, 239.75 W m-2 has been
lost to space…the slight ~0.25 W m-2 imbalance leads to slow warming).

Now,
how exactly can a 1 part in 1,000 energy imbalance lead Holdren to
state, “Weather practically everywhere is being caused by climate
change”? Well, all I can think of is that his statement is not based in
science.

Maybe that imbalance in recent years is somewhat
more…say 2 parts in 1,000 (about a 0.5 W m-2 imbalance). But even that
depends upon whether you believe in the measurements of tiny,
multi-decadal oceanic warming trends of tenths or hundredths of a degree
(depending on depth).

And it’s far from clear that even that is entirely our fault.

Now,
how that tiny imbalance gets translated into a change in weather is,
admittedly, not well understood. But, ultimately, weather is still
related to energy imbalances, and mankind’s role in changing those rates
of energy flow is miniscule.

You might say, “But what about
global warming causing a warmer Gulf Stream, which then clashes with the
cold air masses and makes bigger East Coast snowstorms?” The trouble
with that argument is that “global warming” warms those winter air
masses more than it warms the oceans,reducing the temperature contrast.
So, if the opposite is happening this winter, then it’s not due to
global warming.

The idea that any of the weather we are seeing is
in any significant way due to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions
verges on irrationality.

How much weather is being caused by climate change? Maybe 1 part in 1,000.

Climate models robustly predicted the opposite of what has caused the record cold US weather

An
article published today "Winter weirdness: Is Arctic warming to blame?"
notes "this winter has brought unseasonable warmth to Alaska, frigid
temperatures to much of the Eastern US, and more drought to California.
The jury is still out on whether a warmer Arctic is behind the extreme
weather." "When persistent weather patterns have brought drought or heat
waves or repeated invasions of cold air to usually mild locations in
winter, these links to the Arctic have become a go-to explanation among
many commentators and policymakers."

But is there any credibility to such claims?

The
author interviews several climate scientists active in this debate
including Dr. Elizabeth Barnes, who has previously debunked claims that
'Arctic amplification' causes extreme weather, as well as dueling
hyper-alarmist Jennifer Francis, and others, demonstrating there is
trace to no credible scientific evidence supporting such claims.

Of
particular note, the article points out that climate models actually
predicted the opposite pattern to occur with the jet stream drawn north,
with fewer jet stream dips, and no change in jet stream blocking:

"These
[modeling] studies suggest that a warming Arctic will draw the jet
stream's average track north. Blocking patterns will decrease. Moreover,
the models indicate no "robust" decrease in the jet stream's speed,
notes Elizabeth Barnes, a climate scientist at Colorado State University
in Fort Collins who focuses on the jet stream's behavior and the
factors affecting it. To be sure, the models could be wrong, she
acknowledges. But when different teams with different models converge on
the same answer, that inspires more confidence in the result."

Interesting
how climate fraudsters like Michael Mann claim the opposite of what the
observational evidence shows & climate models predict. It's all for
the cause

Furthermore, the article notes "Long-term swings in
Atlantic sea-surface temperatures, known as the [natural] Atlantic
multidecadal oscillation, appear to have the same effect on the jet
stream's meanders and blocking patterns that Arctic warming and sea ice
are purported to have.

When the AMO enters its warm phase – its
condition since the 1990s – the jet stream tends to weaken and buckle.
Blocking patterns increase, and colder temperatures prevail at
mid-latitudes.

"This also supports the colder winters of recent
years," Magnusdottir says, adding that the results seem robust, since
they show up in real-world data as well as in computer simulations."

In December 2011 I wrote an article that was entitled, DDT - Lets Have Another 10,000 Studies!, saying;

“There
have been thousands of studies regarding the effects of DDT on the
environment, people and wildlife, and most of them were junk science…..
conclusions in search of data. A number of years ago…..Dr. Rutledge
Taylor...produced a film documentary about DDT called 3 Billion and
Counting. …..At one point he had received almost 100 studies from one of
the anti-DDT groups that claimed all sorts of things. He sent them to
me and asked me to look them over…..

As I went through the first
ten, very carefully outlining and taking notes on what was clearly wrong
with those studies, I found out that they were filled with claptrap;
speculation, weasel words, logical fallacies and weak associations. I
went through the next ten just as carefully, without taking notes this
time, and found the exact same pattern in all of them. I skipped to
every fifth study only to find the same pattern over and over again. In
short, these studies were nothing more than “academic welfare”!

You
know what welfare is; pay without work; work being the operative word
for producing something of value. And in these cases the ‘academic
welfare’ produced preconceived conclusions. Conclusions in search of
data! And everyone one of these studies was produced after DDT was
banned! Why?”

Well, there is one thing we know for sure. Anti-DDT
‘studies’ will generate grant money, and the holy grail of science is
grant money, and that’s what makes them ‘magic’. They’re magic because
anti-DDT studies produce gold out of nothing. This kind of reminds me of
that old Grimm brother’s fairy tale about Rumpelstiltskin and spinning
straw into gold, and spinning is the operative word, because they're
still desperately attempting to prove the ban really has some scientific
basis instead of the political decision it really was.

One of of
my readers sent me a link to this study, entitled, Elevated Serum
Pesticide Levels and Risk forAlzheimer Disease, which claimed there
‘may’ be a link between Alzheimer’s and DDT, or in this case DDE the
metabolite, or breakdown product, of DDT, finally concluding;

“Elevated
serum DDE levels are associated with an increased risk for AD and
carriers of an APOE4 ?4 allele may be more susceptible to the effects of
DDE. Both DDT and DDE increase amyloid precursor protein levels,
providing mechanistic plausibility for the association of DDE exposure
with AD. Identifying people who have elevated levels of DDE and carry an
APOE ?4 allele may lead to early identification of some cases of AD.”

The L.A. Times quotes and states;

"Over
80% of us have measurable levels of DDE in our blood, that is a
reality," Richardson told The Times. "We get it from legacy
contamination or food that comes from countries using DDT. None of
the people in the study had DDE levels that were way beyond what is
found in the general population. "The levels we observed were not
outside what you find in the top 5% of people in the United States," he
said.

He added that some of the participants who had high DDE
levels did not have Alzheimer's. "We need to do a lot more work to
understand this association," he said."It may not be as simple as
different levels of exposure.

With all those caveats, why was this study even published?Let
me tell you about weasel words and phrases, which has now been updated.
When you start to look at these “studies” touted by the activists you
find that there is one common thread. They are full of weasel words and
phrases. This gives them a great deal of wiggle room because they never
come out and definitively state that things are factual, they’re always
‘maybes’, and always scary ‘maybes’. Did it ever occur to anyone that
this is nothing more than unfounded printed accusations, or even
professional guess work? When this stuff makes it into print the media
consistently fails to give the impression this may not be viewed as real
science from the rest of the scientific community.

The American
Council on Science and Health published an article on January 28, 2014
dealing with this entitled, “New study tries to link Alzheimer’s disease
and DDT; media thinks it succeeded”.

“A small biomonitoring
study of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients’ exposure to DDT, as compared
to those of non-AD patients, came up with some statistically
significant associations of otherwise no clinical significance. But that
didn’t stop the news media from blaring the findings hither and yon,
without giving a moment’s thought to the underlying mechanisms or
significance. As usual.”The article goes on to say;

“among 86
AD and 79 control patients [Editor's note; way to small a number to
mean anything]. These levels were measured in serum. [DDT] is persistent
(meaning it does not break down rapidly in the environment), as is DDE.
But the levels measured in the study subjects were in the nanogram per
milligram of cholesterol range: where a nanogram is one-millionth of a
milligram! Simply put, the levels of DDE were somewhat akin to a drop of
water in an olympic-sized swimming pool or less.

The problem
with so many of these studies is in how they’re conducted, and what the
media fails to tell everyone, and probably doesn’t understand anyway.
The article went on to say;

The results, such as they are,
indicated that the measured levels of DDE were 3.8 fold higher in the AD
patients than the controls. Does this mean that the DDT/DDE caused AD
in those higher-exposed? Not at all. In fact, the 2 study groups were
assembled in 2 different locations, and each group’s numbers failed to
show any effect. The authors took care of that inconvenient problem by
pooling both groups, and voila! the statistics came back to them as they
hoped.

But while that teeny-tiny amount may make this whole
endeavor ridiculous, even more so is this simple fact: while the amount
of DDT/DDE in the environment has clearly declined since it was banned
and its manufacture nearly disappeared forty-plus years ago, the
incidence of AD has climbed, indeed accelerated over that same period.
That’s tough to explain using the “DDT linked to Alzheimer’s” scare
story. Isn’t it? Also, can you postulate the likely biological
hypothesis for how these chemicals infiltrate one’s brain and interfere
with memory on a progressive basis? No? Neither can I.

The author of the study is quoted as saying;

“That
is exactly why this study was done: to try to discover some–any–
remediable factor to try to prevent AD. Otherwise, we just feel helpless
and at the mercy of fate.

ACSH’s Dr. Gil Ross notes;

“
that’s a poor excuse for twisting yourself into a pretzel to come up
with some bizarre linkage such as this study. And then there’s this
insinuation that all pesticides are alike, which is utter nonsense.”

Of
course groundwork must be laid for future grant chasing. “We have
submitted grants to follow this up in much larger groups of people,”
….“That is the most important step — to replicate this and to have it in
a much larger sample.” And so it goes, "The Magic Study Machine" is
kept humming - filling the world with hype that is promoted by
scientifically illiterate journalists.

But this is just the
latest study generated by the Magic Study Machine over DDT. In January
2012 it was declared that DDT was now “linked” [another weasel word] to
Vitamin D deficiency. Why didn’t the problem appear 40 years ago? And
its really hard to believe whatever is left of DDT could have this kind
of impact on anyone.Then there was the December 2011 claim that DDT causes lung problems in babies?

Again, as Steve Milloy notes;

“DDT
hasn’t been used in developing countries for decades. Now it causes
lung infections? Here’s the study.The statistical associations are weak
and insignificant, the data self-reported and a credible biological
explanation for how DDE could possibly cause respiratory tract
infections is non-existent —and, of course, respiratory tract infections
in infants are so common thath it is absurd to even attempt to
attribute them to trace levels of a ubiquitous metabolite of a
long-banned insecticide. “

Then there was the May 2011 claim that, DDT causes diabetes, breast cancer and infant deaths. Steve Milloy states;

I
traced the diabetes claim to a study published in the July 2009
Environmental Health Perspectives. Aside from the usual fatal flaws of
weak association epidemiology, this study’s assertion that DDT
metabolite DDE was associated with incident diabetes is laughable since
the average body mass index (BMI) of the study subjects was 33.2 — e.g.,
meaning that the average study subject was likely to be obese (check
out this chart to see what height/weight combos make for a BMI of 33+).

Moreover,
no significant associations were reported for study subjects with a BMI
less than 29. I don’t know whether obesity leads to diabetes or
diabetes leads to obesity, but there’s no evidence that DDT is
involved. As to the breast cancer risk claim, I last
addressed this issue in an October 11, 2007 FOXNews.com column,
responding to an October 2007 Environmental Health Perspectives study.

What about infant deaths?

“The
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences study referred to
by the New York Times doesn’t even try to associate DDT with nonmalarial
infant death. It instead only estimates nonmalarial deaths that may be
associated with DDT spraying, the alleged “association” being based on
three studies“suggesting” that DDT exposure may increase pre-term
delivery and small-for-gestational-age births, and shorten the duration
of lactation. “Here’s Steve’s quick take on those three studies:

§
Association between maternal serum concentration of the DDT metabolite
DDE and preterm and small-for-gestational-age babies at birth is an
effort to retrospectively blame DDT for premies and underweight births
35 years after the births. But this can’t be credibly done with biased
data and weak/inconsistent statistical associations.

§ DDE and Shortened Duration of Lactation in a Northern Mexican Town reports statistically insignificant results.

§
Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) and Dichlorodiphenyl Dichloroethene
(DDE) in Human Milk: Effects on Growth, Morbidity,and Duration of
Lactation confounding risk factors were not considered in a multivariate
regression model (i.e., all at the same time), so its hard to blame DDT
on even a statistical basis.

“So contrary to the New York Times‘
assertion, there is no credible evidence that DDT has anything to do
with diabetes, heart disease or infant deaths. Moreover, given that one
million children under the age of five die every year from malaria, even
if DDT did increase the risk of diabetes, breast cancer and infant
death, those risks would be better than the alternative. While the Times
misinforms millions are dying needlessly.”

One thing will become
clear for those of you who really want to understand what’s going on
with these studies. So often these “Magic Studies” are conclusions in
search of data. They involve data dredging for associations and
associations are not proof of causation, and invariably they are
incapable of demonstrating the biological mechanism that supposedly make
these things happen.

As for the Alzheimer study; you have
to wonder if it ever occurred to these people the reason this problem is
becoming so pronounced is because more people are living longer and the
real cause is “multiple birthday syndrome”? Did it ever occur to these
‘scientists’ that these people might not have been able to experience
“multiple birthday syndrome” without the advent of DDT?

For those
of you who could care less about the facts you can take solace in one
reader’s caustic remark; “That settles it…DDT is now on double-secret
probation!” And the Magic Study Machine will soon crank out
another crank study proving that DDT does ________, (just fill in the
blank). Who knows, you may be able to get a grant to study
“something”, or even 'anything' , just so long as 'something' or
'anything' is caused by DDT.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

17 February, 2014

The great 1928 flood of London

Floods are nothing new for the Thames

In
1928 the Thames flooded much of central London, with fatal
consequences. It was the last time the heart of the UK's capital has
been under water. How did the city cope and what has changed?

It
was after midnight when the river burst its banks. Most Londoners slept
as the floodwaters gushed into some of the nation's grandest buildings
and submerged many of city's narrowest slum streets under 4ft of water.

The
Houses of Parliament, the Tate Gallery and the Tower of London were all
swamped. So too, tragically, were many of the crowded basement
dwellings into which the city's poorest families were crammed. Some 14
souls drowned and thousands were left homeless.

The date was 7
January 1928. There was no early warning system to wake householders, no
Thames Barrier to protect the city from tidal surges.

A modern
observer would not find the aftermath entirely unfamiliar, however. As
the waters were drained from Tube lines and debris cleared from the
Embankment, there were political rows about dredging and whether local
or central government should take responsibility.

The river
poured over embankments at Southwark, Lambeth, Temple Pier and the
Houses of Parliament, where Old Palace Yard and Westminster Hall were
quickly flooded.

"It came like a waterfall over the parapet and into the space at the foot of Big Ben," wrote the Times' correspondent.

The
moat at the Tower of London was filled for the first time in 80 years.
The Blackwall and Rotherhithe tunnels were under water. There was
extensive flooding around Victoria Embankment Gardens, Charing Cross
Station and King's College.

"There were miniature waterfalls at
Cleopatra's Needle and the Royal Air Force Memorial, and the training
ship President floated at street level," reported the Manchester
Guardian.

According to some reports, the first section of the
riverbank to give way was at Millbank by the Tate. Incredibly, given its
proximity to the Thames, many of the gallery's works were stored in the
lower ground floor. Some 18 were damaged beyond repair, 226 oil
paintings were badly damaged and a further 67 were slightly damaged.

However, the most serious devastation was in the working class areas that backed on to the river.

What
the Times described as the "many little narrow streets, courts and
alleys, reminiscent of Shakespeare and his times" between Southwark and
Blackfriars bridges were flooded, as was the Bankside area. Police went
door-to-door urging residents to leave.

Many of them were taken
away on carts. "The water was rising so quickly that many who were
roused from their sleep simply threw a blanket round their shoulders and
made their escape in their night attire," the Times said.

Worst affected were the slums on the Westminster side of Lambeth Bridge, where 10 of the 14 victims lost their lives.

"The
people who died were poor people living in crowded basements," says
Anna Carlsson-Hyslop of the University of Manchester's Sustainable
Consumption Institute. They had little time to escape.

At one
inquest, a man named Alfred Harding identified the bodies of his four
daughters - Florence Emily, 18, Lillian Maude, 16, Rosina, six, and
Doris Irene, two.

A separate hearing heard how two domestic
servants, Evelyn Hyde, 20, and Annie Masters Moreton, 22, drowned in
similar circumstances in a room they shared in Hammersmith. The coroner,
Mr HR Oswald, said they had been "caught like animals in a trap drowned
before they realised their position".

Flooding occurred as far
west as Putney and Richmond. The high waters were caused by a depression
in the North Sea which sent a storm surge up the tidal river. It was
the highest levels the Thames had witnessed for 50 years.

The
river had subsided by the end of the day. However, according to Alex
Werner, head of history collections at the Museum of London, "It took
maybe a month to pump out all the water."

What made the relief
effort harder was that London had already suffered extensive flooding in
the days leading up to 7 January. Heavy snow over the Christmas period
had melted, swelling inland rivers and leaving much of east London under
several feet of water.

The tidal flood along the Thames was a different order of magnitude, however.

The
river's flood defences were designed to cope with a tide of 18ft above
the Ordnance Datum. This height had been chosen to exceed the previous
record of 17ft 6in, which was reached in 1881. The 1928 surge saw this
exceeded by 11in.

In the wake of the flood, the embankments were
raised. However, it would take the North Sea flood of 1953 to persuade
the authorities to look into constructing the Thames Barrier.

Misconceived EU and UK policies provide a better explanation of the floods than 'climate change'

Inevitably,
in the wake of all these dramatic storms and floods, the usual
suspects, eagerly abetted by the BBC, Channel 4 News and Sky, piled in
to claim that the latest “extreme weather events” – coupled with
blizzards in 49 of the 50 American states – are clear evidence of
man-made global warming. At their forefront, proclaiming that “all the
evidence suggests there is a link to climate change”, was that
arch-climate proponent Dame Julia Slingo, chief scientist at the Met
Office; that same Met Office that, back in November, was predicting that
“precipitation” for the three months between December and February was
likely “to fall into the driest of our five categories”, and would more
likely than not take the form of snow,

This is also, of course,
the same Met Office that in March 2012 was assuring us that April to
June that year would be drier than average, with April the driest month,
just before we enjoyed the wettest April ever; that in October 2010
forecast that December would be 2ºC warmer than average, just before the
coldest December since records began; and that in April 2009 said it
was “odds on for a barbecue summer” with “below average” rainfall, just
before the heavens opened for months on end.

Even more
significantly, this was the same Dame Julia who, in 2010, told MPs that
the global warming-obsessed Met Office relies for its short-term
forecasts on the very same £33?million super-computer that it uses to
provide the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with its
most valued projections of what the weather will be like in 100 years’
time.

As we know, since the 17-year “pause” in the rise in global
temperatures made a nonsense of all those IPCC computer models, the
warmists have sought to prop up their faltering religion by seizing on
any “extreme weather event” they can lay their hands on, hot, cold, wet
or dry. These recent storms and floods have been as manna from heaven
for the likes of our “climate change” secretary Ed Davey, Lord Stern,
the Great Moonbat and Bob Ward, the spokesman handsomely paid to spout
all the required mantras by Jeremy Grantham, the billionaire climate
zealot who has funded no fewer than two institutes at leading London
universities.

Another Grantham luminary, and leading light of
John Gummer’s “independent” Climate Change Committee, is Sir Brian
Hoskins, wheeled on to preach the word by the BBC Radio 4 Today
programme on Thursday. Although there might be “no simple link” to any
of “these extreme events around the world”, he said (as they always do),
nevertheless the increase in rainfall and atmospheric humidity, melting
polar ice, temperatures likely to rise by “four to five degrees” by the
end of the century and the threatening rise in sea levels, could only
lead any sensible person to one conclusion.

All true science, of
course, has here been thrown out of the window. There is no rising trend
in atmospheric humidity. Put the Arctic and the Antarctic together and
there is more polar sea ice today than at any time since satellite
records began in 1979. Not even the IPCC predicts a temperature rise of
5ºC. The latest Nasa Grace satellite data on sea levels, which have been
modestly rising since we emerged from the Little Ice Age 200 years ago,
shows that, on the trend of the past decade, the rise by 2100 would be
just 6.7in.

For proper evidence-based science these days one has
to step outside the hermetically sealed bubble of warmist group-think
and look to that array of expert blogs and websites that provide the
data necessary to thinking straight. On the belief that Britain has
recently experienced unprecedented rain, for instance, look at the
analysis of the Met Office’s England and Wales rainfall data sets on
Paul Homewood’s website, Not A Lot Of People Know That. There is no
upward trend in our rainfall. Even January’s continual downpours made it
only the sixteenth wettest month since records began in 1766. Even if
this month’s rain adds a further 200mm (8in) to the December-January
figure, the resulting 650mm would still be way short of the 812mm (32in)
recorded between November 1929 and January 1930.

The real lesson
of this episode is not that we are seeing unprecedented rain, but that,
across the board, a whole raft of misconceived EU and UK policies have
been horribly caught out. We now further have an official admission from
the Environment Agency that the reason why it so disastrously abandoned
dredging of our rivers such as the Thames and those needed to drain
floodwater from the Somerset Levels when it took control in 1996 was
that absurdly expensive new EU waste management rules made it
“uneconomical” to dispose of the silt dredged out of them.

A real
madness has taken over here, as we saw in that weird rant last week
from the pitifully ill-equipped Mr Davey, when he lashed out at his
“wilfully ignorant” Conservative colleagues for “parrotting the
arguments of the most discredited climate change deniers”.

Whether
or not it was he who described Owen Paterson as “climate stupid”, the
one minister who has so far made a practical and informed contribution
towards saving the Somerset Levels from any repeat of their present
horror story, Davey claimed that these people were in danger of
undermining the whole of Britain’s present energy policy. That, of
course, is precisely what a growing number of better-informed people
than himself would like to see.

Dim
as an eco-friendly lightbulb: A portrait of British Liberal
politician who this week called climate sceptics 'diabolical'

Not
heard of Ed Davey? You are forgiven. This fellow may be a Rt Hon, a
multiple-red-box wallah, a fellow with a grand private office, spin
doctors and attendant lackeys.

He may be Secretary of State for
Energy and Climate Change - a job so important that it comes with its
own fuel-guzzling, ozone layer-torpedoing limousine. But he has a public
profile as low as a limbo dancer.

Comrade Davey, 48, shines as dimly as an eco-friendly light bulb. How appropriate for a climate-change enthusiast.

In
Parliament, when he speaks, gallery reporters lay down their pencils
and fold their arms for a snooze, so confident are they that nothing
remarkable will be said. He is not so much an orator as a
platitudes-by-the-yard man.

One of the ways we sketchwriters pass
the time during a Davey speech is to play Cliche Bingo. You get a point
each time he says ‘challenge’ or ‘proactive’ or ‘empower’.

And
yet, more by accident than merit, this over-diluted glass of Ribena,
this wholesale accepter of received wisdoms, finds himself in one of the
hottest Whitehall departments.

This week, he used that bully
pulpit to make an indignant, bad-tempered little speech that insulted
the intelligence of people who just happen to disagree with him.

He
mounted a distinctly illiberal, hyperbolic attack on climate-change
sceptics, calling them ‘wilfully ignorant, head-in-the-sand nimbys’ who
were driven by ‘europhobia’. He waved aside considered and thoughtful
doubts about the climate-change industry as ‘diabolical’.

Quite a word, isn’t it? It means Satanic, akin to devils, on a par with Lucifer. Just for being sceptical.

Along
the way, he pretty much attributed the current bad weather to man-made
global warming. To stuff so much nonsense into one small speech was
quite a feat.

So who is this leviathan, this seer, this genetic composite of Michael Fish, Jacques Delors and Mr Pooter?

Ed
Davey became an MP in the Centre-Left landslide of 1997, defeating
sometime Tory minister Richard Tracey by just 56 votes. Before entering
Parliament he had worked as a management consultant and as an adviser to
Liberal Democrat MPs.

Although clearly ambitious, and in those
days something of a pin-up, Davey was one of the less scintillating
members of Paddy Ashdown’s band of desperadoes.

Some of the Lib
Dems had a raffish individuality about them. They were unpredictable.
They were independent-minded. But those qualities were never much
evident in Ed Davey.

He was a party loyalist and his Commons
interventions blew long with slogans and soundbites. Over 16 long years
of listening to his dronings, I don’t think I have ever detected a
scintilla of originality in any phrase or conclusion. He is about as
radical as a mid-range Ford Focus.

He was quickly rewarded for
such dullness with a frontbench brief on the Treasury. Gordon Brown was
Chancellor at the time. Dear old Gordon would squint across the House at
this pipsqueak Davey and you could see him thinking: ‘I’ll tae that wee
sprat for mah high tea!’ Which he duly did.

Tory frontbenchers
valiantly hurled themselves against the New Labour battlements, pointing
out that Mr Brown was on a mad spending spree. They had no chance of
altering the Government’s course but the Tories at least followed their
principles and, as it happens, spoke the truth.

Ed Davey, Mr
Mute, supported the status quo. He always does. At Westminster, the
status quo blokes tend to do well. Mr Davey kept being promoted. Charles
Kennedy gave him the education beat. Menzies Campbell made
him his chief of staff. Nick Clegg promoted him yet again to foreign
affairs. (He is, naturally, wildly enthusiastic about Europe.)

Davey
was like the girl in the Seventies TV adverts for Nimble bread. He was
flying like a bird, rising and rising on thermals of consensus.

Given
his ‘back story’, it is all rather disappointing, for his life outside
politics has had its unexpected, indeed inspiring moments.

Born
to a solicitor in the East Midlands, he lost his parents horribly early
in life and made the most of his private education to take a first-class
degree in economics at Oxford. Good for him.

The orphaned
teenager worked in a pork-pie factory (hence, says a Lib Dem colleague
cruelly, his chunky waistline). Again, good for him.

But having
actually done a proper job, at least for a while, you might expect him
to have acquired some more robustly common-sensical views.

As a
young man he also risked his life to save a woman from some rail tracks
and was duly rewarded with recognition by the Royal Humane Society. This
is all good stuff.

So why on earth is he such a crashing bore
politically? He subscribes to the Left’s big-state orthodoxy, to the
Government-knows-best creed that has infected so much of our
political class.

In 2010 the Lib Dems went into Government for
the first time since Lloyd George. Had Mr Davey been a Conservative he
would have been fortunate to become even a ministerial bag-carrier, but
because he was a Lib Dem - and a Lib Dem, furthermore, who did not have
flat feet, a wall eye or a mad hairdo - he was made a minister.

He
was given a middle-ranking job under Vince Cable at the Department of
Business. He was minister for post offices. Minister for stamps.

There
he probably would have stayed until being returned to the backbenchers,
had it not been for Chris Huhne’s little local difficulty.

When
Mr Huhne went to prison for perverting the course of justice, Nick Clegg
looked around in desperation and gave his job to Mr Davey (energy
having been designated a Lib Dem portfolio).

Little was either of
them to know that Ed Miliband was about to make a big play with energy
prices, making this a frontline department. Of course, one reason energy
prices were so high was that they had been saddled with green taxes
under a previous Energy Secretary - the self-same Miliband.

Rather
than make political hay with this, as he could have done, Mr Davey
wimped out and insisted that the green policies must remain in place.
Who pays most for green taxes? The working poor.

Rather than
question those policies, Mr Davey trotted out the mantra that we should
regard it as a privilege to be paying so much more to keep the lights
on. Lucky us to face such price hikes.

And now, playing to form,
he uses the bad weather to bang the highly questionable drum for
climate- change prevention and all the bureaucratic and fiscal burdens
it brings.

Even more typically, climate change is produced as an argument to justify the great mothership itself - the European Union.

We
keep being told the floods are unprecedented. Not true. They happened
like this in the 17th century, when 2,000 poor souls died. No one spoke
then about man-made climate change.

Scepticism was once regarded
as an essential quality in any civilised and, yes, truly liberal
society. Scepticism tests the orthodox. All the great thinkers,
from Socrates to Einstein, from Galileo to Marie Curie, were in their
own way sceptics. Scepticism challenges the old ways and that
leads to progress and the truth.

But now scepticism is
‘diabolical’. Ed Davey has declared it to be so. If you dare to disagree
with him, you must be the spawn of Satan.

Residents
who were forced to have solar panels fitted to their homes under a
green scheme are now being charged £1,000 more for heating.

The
householders were given a £38,000 taxpayer-funded grant and were told
the panels would generate spare electricity that they could sell back to
the National Grid. They would be saving hundreds of pounds on their
energy bills and helping the environment, they were told.

But the
panels were incorrectly installed and, as a result, some people have
seen their bills rise by up to 220 per cent. Sixty residents have signed
a petition stating that many have been pushed into fuel poverty.
Experts blame ‘inherent design issues’ for the problems, including
panels fitted on the wrong sides of houses.

A total of 175
householders in Longtown, Cumbria, received the new system from Warmer
Energy Services, financed by Riverside Housing Association.

The
£38,000 grant came from a government-backed scheme called Cert (Carbon
Emissions Reduction Target). One man has now turned off his boiler
altogether. James Rob, 42, a window cleaner, who lives in a two-bedroom
flat, used to pay £25 a week for heating. He said: ‘Any saving would
have been fine, but now I’m paying £80 a week. I can’t afford it so I
only heat one room with an electric heater.

‘The boiler is far
too powerful, it is a 9kw boiler, enough to heat the Royal Albert Hall.
It costs £1.24 an hour to heat. ‘To rectify the problem and have a
working system installed could cost £4,700.’

‘All money generated from the solar panels, which I don’t use, is going into the grid which Riverside then receives money for.’

Janet
and Tom Boak switched to the new heating system in the spring of
2012. They now pay £98 in monthly direct debits to EDF Energy for
their three-bedroom semi-detached property which they live in with their
two sons. Before the scheme they paid £39 a month.

Mrs
Boak, 51, a carer for her 57-year-old husband, said: ‘When we used
to have the coal fire we would put the heating on when we got up
at 9am and the last shovel would go on at 9pm.

‘Now we only have it on from 6pm till 10pm because we can’t afford it. We are cold the rest of the time.

‘I
had to use my Christmas savings to pay off a bill. We didn’t want the
new system because we had one installed two years previously. We were
told it was cheaper to run and we would make a significant saving. We
felt we had no choice.’

Annie Graham, 77, a retired carer, has
seen her electricity bills soar to nearly £3,000 a year – compared to
£1,750 a year previously.

In one month alone she paid £450 to
heat her three-bedroom semi-detached property. The great grandmother
said: ‘I was told it would be cheaper and that if I refused I would be
responsible for the upkeep and repairs to the old system. I am 77 years
old and in the past year the new heating has cost me £3,000. I’ve just
paid £82.32 for seven and a half days of keeping the house warm.
I’m just on my basic pension.

‘When you get old you are just a number. I was active before this happened, I was doing everything – now I don’t go to Bingo.’

A report last December by consulting engineers Avoca, analysed the work at two complainants’ properties.

It
stated: ‘It is evident the energy costs for each of the
properties surveyed has increased over and above the normal
expected rate and certainly there has been no reduction in costs.

‘It
has been established that the installed heating systems have inherent
design issues that contradict the requirement for providing efficient,
effective and economical heating to the properties.’

A Riverside spokesman said: ‘Generally the feedback from tenants about the improvements has been very positive.

‘We
are a non-profit organisation and use the income generated, by selling
energy back to the National Grid, to improve homes and provide better
services to tenants.’

During
his 2008 campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama said that electricity
prices would "necessarily skyrocket" under his grandiose idea of a
cap-and-trade energy scheme to fight global warming. Well, he actually
kept his promise of higher prices. Meanwhile, with the Southern and
Mid-Atlantic states currently buried beneath snow and ice, the only
place that seems to be getting warmer is the area around a massive solar
energy project in the California desert.

Since coming online
last year, and even in the preliminary testing, dozens of dead birds
have been found surrounding the Ivanpah solar power plant, which uses a
five-square-mile array of mirrors to reflect sunlight to boilers mounted
on three 40-story high towers. The temperatures around the towers
reportedly can reach 1,000 degrees, which is enough to cook any size
bird unfortunate enough to fly through the area. All this to create just
enough electricity to light 140,000 homes a year at a cost of $2.2
billion. Most of that came from a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee,
which means taxpayers are on the hook for three Solyndras here. A sure
sign of exorbitant expense: utilities that are purchasing the power from
Ivanpah aren't releasing the cost of their 25-year deals.

And
while Ivanpah represents an ideal source of electricity in Barack
Obama's world, the rest of us who live in the real world are enjoying a
winter without the sticker shock of crippling natural gas prices.
Despite a bitterly cold winter that caused a record-setting day for
natural gas usage back in January, prices haven't been as unstable as in
previous winters, even with a 40% jump. The reason? Americans are
extracting their own natural gas through the environmentally incorrect
practice of fracking.

So let's compare. The ideal for Barack
Obama costs up to four times as much to produce a kilowatt of
electricity, has the potential to cook hundreds or even thousands of
birds annually in a giant oven, and is secured by a $1.6 billion
taxpayer-backed loan guarantee. On the other hand, private enterprise
has created a situation where supply shortages are smoothed out and
costs are relatively stable -- not to mention the side benefit of
producing thousands of good-paying jobs.

We'd be nuts not to
embrace the method shown to us by the private sector, but everyone knows
Obama is crazy about "fundamentally transforming" the nation we know
and love.

Australian
companies paid $6.6 billion in the first full year of the carbon tax,
with the seven biggest electricity producers each slugged more than $250
million.

The first annual tally of carbon tax liabilities, released on Friday by the Clean Energy Regulator, was largely as forecast.

But
the Abbott government seized on the sheer scale of the figures to
increase pressure on Labor to "get out of the way" of its election
promise to abolish the tax. Opposition leader Bill Shorten has vowed to
block the government's carbon repeal bills in the Senate.

Environment
Minister Greg Hunt said the "hit on the economy" from the tax was worse
than Labor had predicted when the Gillard government introduced it last
year.

He said the cost to the economy was $7.6 billion once
reduced fuel tax credits and charges on the refrigeration and aviation
industries were considered.

Of the 348 companies that paid the
tax, NSW-based Macquarie Generation had the biggest bill at nearly $470
million. Great Energy Alliance, the company behind Victoria's Loy Yang
power plant, paid $425 million.

Sixteen of the top 20 carbon tax
contributors were power companies, with a combined bill of $4.1 billion,
according to the six-monthly update by the Clean Energy Regulator.

Manufacturing companies paid a total $1.1 billion.

Mr Hunt used the numbers to renew the attack on Labor which has defended the tax.

"All
Australians can blame Bill Shorten [for] helping to push up electricity
bills and the overall cost of living," he said. "It's time for Labor to
get out of the way and support the repeal of the carbon tax."

Mr
Hunt said the $7.6 billion paid by companies had resulted in only a 0.1
per cent fall in emissions. Proof, he said, that "it doesn't even
work".

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

16 February, 2014

Scientists tricked into believing this lie

'People who were daring to question it didn't get funded'

The
climate-change movement is ultimately designed to thin the earth’s
population, and the science behind the movement is deeply and
deliberately flawed to further a political end, according to
climatologist Dr. Tim Ball.

In his new book, “The Deliberate
Corruption of Climate Science,” Ball also lays out how he believes those
perpetrating in this massive scientific fraud managed to keep the truth
hidden from mainstream scientists and later intimidated most of them to
keep them quiet.

Ball is one of the leading voices from the
climatology community to loudly condemn the conclusions and tactics of
those calling for major public-policy changes to combat the purported
threat to the climate posed by human activity.

According to Ball,
the motivation for the climate-change movement’s leaders is nothing
new. He told Radio America’s Greg Corombos it is the latest incarnation
of an effort that goes back to the 19th century writings of Thomas
Malthus, who argued that the human population was growing so fast that
the earth’s resources could never sustain it. He, therefore, advocated
population control to ward off mass disease and starvation.

Malthus
and others ultimately identified industrialized nations as the greatest
consumer of resources and suggested the advance of industry needed to
be stopped. As the years went on, Ball said, the focus narrowed to the
fossil fuels powering the economy in advanced nations.

He said
that obsession ultimately led the modern-day activists to settle on
carbon dioxide as the culprit for the earth’s dangerous climate trends
but required an ingenious approach to get the public on board with the
idea.

“If you can shut off the flow of fossil fuels, that will
stop the engine of those industrialized nations, but people would scream
immediately if that happened,” Ball said. “But if you could show that
the byproduct of the combustion of that fossil fuel, carbon dioxide, was
causing runaway global warming and climate change, then you could use
that for a vehicle to introduce legislation to shut down those
industrialized nations.

“That’s been the whole driving force of
everything Maurice Strong is doing and, of course, underlies what
Obama’s pushing,” he said.

Ball sees Maurice Strong as one of the
most pivotal figures in the advancement of what he considers the
modern-day assault on industrialized nations. He said Strong grew up in a
socialist Canadian family and rose to prominence in a way many might
not expect.

“He’s a superb organizer of bureaucracies, and he
made a lot of money in the industry. That’s the irony of these people
like Bill Gates. They get money, and then they’re going to go save the
planet,” mused Ball.

Strong ultimately worked his way into
becoming the head of the United Nations climate program in the 1980s.
That role led to his calling for the Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992 and
the creation of a larger U.N. vision known as Agenda 21. Later in the
1990s, Strong shepherded the creation of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, where Ball said Strong wielded immense
power.

“Strong, in an interview with Elaine Dewar, in a book
called ‘Cloak of Green,’ she said what he’s doing is using the United
Nations to establish world government and total control,” he said. “When
he made the comment to her about how we’ve got to shut down
industrialized nations, she said, ‘Why don’t you run for politics?’ He
said, ‘You can’t do anything as a politician. I’m going to go to the
U.N. and get all the money I want and not be accountable to anybody.’”

Ball
said the fix was in from the start and that the IPCC was only tasked
with one job, proving that global warming was caused by rising levels of
carbon dioxide.

“They did that by directing them to only look at
human causes of climate change. Of course, if you don’t know how much
natural variability there is, you can’t possibly determine the human
portion. They didn’t care about that. They just wanted to be able to say
the science is settled, and we’re 95 percent certain that human carbon
dioxide is causing global warming. That’s why they picked on CO2, and
that was Maurice Strong’s role in it,” he said.

One of the most
difficult arguments for the public to believe from climate-change
skeptics like Ball is that there was, and continues to be, some grand
conspiracy to produce results concluding that human activity is
triggering higher carbon dioxide and that urgent actions to curb
emissions must be taken.

Ball said the U.N.’s climate panel was
very carefully constructed to limit who actually saw the data and who
made policy recommendations based on the research. He said the IPCC had
three working groups. One did the scientific research that was
predestined to show alarming climate change. The second group then
projected how the climate would change if new policies weren’t adopted.
The third group formulated policies for industrialized nations to follow
to avoid the dire predictions.

Ball said the results were an odd
combination of admittedly bad science and a tight circle of experts
turning out the finished products.

“In Working Group One, they
tell you everything that’s wrong with their computer models. They set it
all out. They say, ‘Look, we don’t know this. We don’t know that. This
is wrong. That’s wrong. But they set up a separate group called the
Summary for Policy Makers, which includes politicians and bureaucrats
and a few very carefully selected scientists. Most of these were
scientists at the Climactic Research Institute (CRU), where all the
leaked emails about what they were doing came from,” Ball said.

“They
controlled critical chapters (in the IPCC reports). They controlled the
chapter on data, and they manipulated the data. They controlled the
chapter on paleo-climate data, that is reconstruction of past climates,”
he said. “So they set about through that Summary for Policy Makers,
creating a completely false image of what their findings were.

“The
Summary for Policy Makers, by their own rules, is released before the
science report is released and they know that’s going to get media
attention. It says the temperature is going to rise by this much
and all of the other nonsense and that is what gets the media headlines.

“Then a few months later they bring out the science report, which of course they know nobody’s going to read,” he said.

“But
when you compare the science report with the Summary for Policy Makers,
it’s more than the difference of night and day. It’s like two
completely different planets. This is done deliberately to deceive,”
Ball said. “Everything’s been manipulated to create a completely false
and extreme scenario of what their research actually shows.”

Even
if Strong and his allies at the U.N. and CRU managed to close ranks in
conducting research and presenting the findings, how did such a large
consensus of scientists around the world come to agree with the IPCC
conclusions if the data is clearly flawed?

Ball said some just
don’t understand the science well, and for others the lack of public
opposition pretty much boils down to money and power.

“The vast
majority of people, and even scientists, they don’t understand climate
science. That’s part of the difficulty. They might know their own area
of physics or their own area of biology, but they didn’t know what the
climate science was, so they just accepted it,” said Ball, noting that
the bulk of scientists didn’t examine the science report and merely read
through the Summary for Policy Makers.

Ball said another
brilliant stroke taken by Strong and the IPCC was to enlist the World
Meteorological Organization, or WMO. That group is made up of
bureaucrats from every national weather agency. Ball said the WMO then
proclaimed the IPCC findings to be national policy in all member
nations, and the few political figures who dared to question the
findings were dismissed as lacking standing in climate science.

Independent
scientists were also silenced because the WMO and its member nations
only provided money to scientists who adopted the official line.

“Because
all of the national weather agencies were involved in this, then they
directed funding only to those researchers that were proving what the
IPCC was saying,” Ball said. “As a result, people who were daring to
question it didn’t get funded.”

Unsurprisingly,
President Obama didn’t let Congress’s decision to finally end
Production Tax Credits (PTCs) let the air out of his breezy wind power
subsidy agenda. Speaking at his State of the Union address, he said:
“We’ve subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough. It’s
time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that rarely has been
more profitable, and double down on a clean energy industry that never
has been more promising. Pass clean energy tax credits. Create these
jobs.”

We can be very certain that Big Wind will be back with
gale force attempts to persuade Congress to restore the longstanding PTC
,which was allowed to expire at the end of 2013. This subsidy which has
paid producers 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity generated
was originally pitched as a temporary assistance means to establish a
cost-competitive renewable power source. Now, more than 20 years later
after having “temporarily” extended the PTC seven times, wind is still
substantially more expensive than coal, natural gas, and nuclear power.
In fact, taxpayer subsidies can often account for more than one-third of
the retail price for electricity.

Between 2009 and 2013, federal
revenues lost to wind power developers are estimated to have amounted
to about $14 billion, including $6 billion from PTC and another $8
billion from an alternative energy subsidy provided in the Obama
stimulus package. Wind and solar each receive more than 50 times more
subsidy support per megawatt-hour than conventional coal, and more than
20 times more in terms of average electricity generated by coal and
natural gas. According to a 2008 Energy Information Agency (EIA) report,
the average 2007 subsidy per megawatt-hour for wind and solar was about
$24, compared with an average $1.65 for all others.

Regarding those “Heavily-Subsidized Oil Companies”

Using
a very broad definition applied by Oil Change International, the term
“subsidies” refers to: “any government action that lowers the cost of
fossil fuel energy production, raises the price received by energy
producers, or lowers the price paid by consumers.” Yet in one form or
another, these same advantages are extended to other industries as well,
and often with far more generous benefits.

In reality, oil and
gas extraction and refining has already been singled out to receive even
fewer tax breaks than other industries. Whereas Section 199 of the
“American Job Creation Act of 2004” provides a 9 percent deduction from
net income for businesses engaged in “qualified production activities,”
oil and gas was penalized and limited to a 6 percent deduction.
Meanwhile, many manufacturing industries, including farm equipment,
appliances, and pharmaceuticals, take advantage of the full Section 199
deduction. Even highly profitable companies like Microsoft and Apple get
those breaks, as do some foreign companies that operate factories in
the U.S.

Small independent petroleum producers are eligible for
resource depletion allowances which are similar to benefits available
for all oil well mineral extraction, timber industries, etc., allowing
them to pass the depletion on to individual investors. Large integrated
corporations haven’t been eligible for these since the mid-1970s.

Oil
and gas companies also receive benefits allowing them to write off
drilling expenses in the year incurred rather than capitalizing them and
writing them off over several years. This affects only timing of the
expenses, not the total amounts. In addition, as with all international
companies, they receive a tax credit for taxes paid to foreign nations.
The purpose is to provide an offset to foreign taxes, often paid as
royalties, so that the companies aren’t taxed twice on the same income.

And What About that Other Tax Money Blowing in the Wind?

A
2013 report titled “Assessing Wind Power Cost Estimates,” published by
the Institute for Energy Research, found that the 2012 PTC extension
alone cost taxpayers $12 billion. It also stated that details of many
other wind power costs go unreported in government-funded study groups
such as the Energy Laboratory (NREL). It observes that NREL’s estimates
exclude key categories such as the cost of transmission and grid
balancing for far-away, intermittent wind sources.

Rather than
approaching the cost of wind power from the point of view of the wind
project developer, the report author, Dr. Giberson, takes a broader view
of the cost of wind power to all Americans, including electricity
consumers and taxpayers. Such costs include the expense of transmission
expansions needed to develop wind power, other grid integration
expenses, and added grid reliability expenses. When these costs are
accounted for, adding wind power via the PTC cannot reduce the overall
cost of power to the economy — it merely shifts costs to taxpayers.

The
PTC wind subsidy also creates an economic market distortion called
“negative pricing.” So long as projects generate electricity, even
during times when that power isn’t needed, producers still collect the
tax credit for every kilowatt-hour they generate. We taxpayers pay for
that, as do electricity consumers in the form of price rate adjustments.

And
those “Green energy” jobs the President promised in his previous State
of the Union Address … how’s that working out so far? Navigant
Consulting of Chicago estimated that ending the PTC could ultimately
cost 37,000 jobs throughout the wind power industry out of about 75,000
presently existing. So what would savings of those jobs through a PTC
extension cost? Comparing the taxpayer costs per job for wind vs. the
oil and gas sector, Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Robert Bryce
estimates the former to be 15 times more.

Bryce arrived at this
number by dividing a PTC $12.18 billion extension by 37,000 jobs
purported to be saved per year spread over a decade, amounting to
$32,900 per job annually. In contrast, applying March 2012 Congressional
Budget Office figures putting tax preferences extended to the fossil
fuel sector at a total of about $2.5 billion per year, along with an
American Petroleum Institute estimate that the oil and gas sector
employs 1.2 million people (not including service stations), that works
out to $2,100 per job, per year. And while Bryce admits that this isn’t a
perfect apples-to-apples correlation, he believes that it does provide a
general sense of comparative tax treatments.

At least one Green
energy developer recognizes that these stimulus subsidy programs have a
record of doing more harm than good, and he isn’t reluctant to say why.
Patrick Jenevein, CEO of the Dallas-based Tang Energy Group, posted a
Wall Street Journal article noting that since 2009, wind farm developers
like his company have been able to get a cash grant or tax credit
covering up to 30 percent of their capital investment in a new project.
He argues that as a consequence: “Government subsidies to new wind farms
have only made the industry less focused on reducing costs. In turn,
the industry produces a product that isn’t as efficient or cheap as it
might be if we focused less on working the political system and more on
research and development.”

Jenevein points out that: “After the
2009 subsidy became available, wind farms were increasingly built in
less-windy locations… The average wind-power project built in 2011 was
located in an area with wind conditions 16 percent worse than those of
the average… Meanwhile, wind-power prices have increased to an average
$54 per megawatt-hour, compared with $37 in 2005.” He continues: “If our
communities can’t reasonably afford to purchase and rely upon the wind
power we sell, it is difficult to make a moral case for our business,
let alone an economic one.”

Important Lessons from Across the Pond

Teachable
lessons for America from the Germans are reported by Der Spiegel in an
article titled, “Gone With the Wind: Weak Returns Cripple German
Renewables.” It emphasizes that rather than returning up to 20 percent
annual returns on investment as promised, more often than not such
pledges have not only been illusory, but that many of the investors have
lost money to boot. Court complaints are mounting from those who
haven’t received a dividend disbursement in years, along with investors
in wind installations which have gone belly up. Bankruptcies combined
with plans recently released by new German Economy Minister Sigmar
Gabriel for a reduction in the guaranteed feed-in tariff are scaring off
new money.

Particular concern is focused upon numerous projects
that are financed by an investment model known as “closed-end funds”
—which typically run for a 20-year period and are restricted to a
limited number of investors. While such funds are supposed to guarantee
annual dividend payments, about half of Germany’s wind enterprises are
in such bad shape that many of those investors may not even recover
their initial investments after 20 years. And even if they did,
inflation will likely have reduced the value of those paybacks below
original investment values.

A ten-year review 170 commercial wind
company annual reports conducted by the German Wind Energy
Association’s Investment Committee presents a sobering picture. Even if
returns were to increase dramatically in the coming years — as a
possible result of paying down debts, for example — only those projects
in the best locations are likely to prove profitable. One-fifth of those
with available annual reports dating back more than ten years haven’t
ever paid back dividends exceeding 2 percent. This is all the more
remarkable given the substantial government renewable energy subsidies
provided over the years.

Writing again in the Wall Street
Journal, Robert Bryce provides evidence that Europe’s long green energy
romance honeymoon is over. Both the EU and German government announced
separately last month that they are rolling back aggressive subsidies
and mandates for renewables they simply cannot afford.

Such
subsidies which now cost German consumers and industry about $32 billion
prompted Minister Gabriel to state that his country is risking
“dramatic deindustrialization” if it doesn’t reduce energy costs. After
spending more than $100 billion subsidizing renewables since 2000,
thanks (or no thanks) to a move away from nuclear power following the
2011 Fukushima disaster, Germany’s coal dependency is increasing. An
estimated 7,300 megawatts of new coal plants are planned to be brought
on line next year.

In Denmark, the wind investment wonderland,
there’s little wonder why residential consumers pay more than three
times more for electricity than we Americans do. The Center for European
Policy Studies, a Brussels-based think tank, reported that European
steelmakers pay twice as much four electricity (and four times more for
natural gas) than in the U.S.

Subsidies have also blown ill winds
in Spain. The economically ravaged country has already racked up a $35
billion “tariff deficit.”

Let these European experiences provide
vital instruction for America. So long as this industry’s survival
depends upon preferential government handouts and regulatory mandates,
two things are clear. Wind is not a “free” or competitive free market
source of energy. It is also not a charity we can continue to afford
blow more money into.

Kansas legislature working on resolution declaring Obama climate goals based on false assumptions about manmade CO2

A
Kansas House committee is weighing a resolution urging Congress to
resist following President Barack Obama's plan for addressing climate
change

Members of the House Energy and Environment Committee took
nearly two hours of testimony Thursday about the measure. It declares
that the federal goals for addressing climate change are based on false
assumptions about the role of carbon dioxide and human activity.
Supporters point to data suggesting warming is occurring naturally and
human influence is overstated.

Environmentalists argue that the
resolution is based on bad science and ignores data that emissions and
humans are altering sea levels and weather patterns.

The
resolution cites Obama's 2013 plan that calls for a reduction in
greenhouse gas emissions and encourages development of renewable forms
of energy.

The
government agency responsible for dealing with floods was last night
under pressure to explain why it had spent thousands of pounds on what
appeared to be ‘pet projects’ of its chairman Lord Smith.

The mugs,
emblazoned with the slogan ‘Some people are gay. Get over it!’, are
thought to have been handed out to staff at the organisation’s
headquarters in London and Bristol. The cost of the mugs is enough to
buy more than 250 sandbags to protect flood victims’ homes.

It
has also emerged that the agency spent £30,000 sponsoring Birmingham’s
Gay Pride festival in 2009 and that staff were provided with ‘proud to
be at Pride’ T-shirts and banners with the organisation’s logo on at
Manchester Gay Pride marches in 2009 and 2007.

The agency even
took out a costly half-page advert in the Independent newspaper’s
Diversity section to boast about its sponsorship of the Birmingham Gay
Pride event in 2009. Lord Smith became EA chairman in 2008.

The
revelations come as the agency faces growing criticism of its handling
of the flooding crisis. An analysis of the Environment Agency’s spending
has uncovered that it spent more than £250,000 from 2011 to mid-2012 on
meetings at private venues, despite having more than two dozen offices
around the country.

The agency paid £5,439 to Aston Villa
Football Club in 2012 for the use of meeting rooms, even though its
Villa Park ground is only ten miles away from the organisation’s
regional Midlands office.

The Environment Agency would not reveal
details of what rooms it hired but Villa Park offers a host of
luxurious meeting places including the Holte Suite, which costs £4,500
for a full day, and boasts an ‘elegant ground-floor suite’ which can
cater for conference events and ‘sumptuous black-tie dinners’.

Meanwhile,
the 1874 suite costs £3,000 for a day and offers views across the pitch
as well as two bars and is said to be ideal for ‘stylish receptions,
gala dinners and company meetings’.

The EA paid another £4,320 to
Fulham Football Club in the same year for meeting rooms, even though
the agency’s London offices are based only five miles away from Fulham’s
Craven Cottage ground, which boasts a number of upmarket meeting rooms
including the Marathonbet Lounge, which overlooks the Thames and is
described as ‘ideal for small gatherings and business events’.

Another
£3,892 was paid to Sheffield United FC – recorded under the heading
‘restaurant and bars’ on a list of spending – for meeting rooms at the
club’s Bramall Lane ground, despite the Environment Agency having
offices little more than three miles away.

An EA spokeswoman said
the organisation tried to hold meetings at its own premises, or in
other government offices, and used commercial premises only ‘if
absolutely necessary’. Referring specifically to the football ground
venues, she added: ‘We will have used these premises as they were the
best value for money available.’

Last night, Tory MP Ian
Liddell-Grainger, whose Bridgwater and West Somerset constituency has
been devastated by the floods, reacted with fury to the spending and
called for Lord Smith to stand down. He said: ‘It seems like Chris Smith
is spending taxpayers’ money on his own pet projects. He has been
proven to be wanting at every level dealing with these floods.

‘It
was crass stupidity to tell people who are living on flood plains that
they’ve got it wrong. Now this shows that he’s actually made silly
choices himself to spend hundreds of pounds on mugs and thousands
sponsoring a Gay Pride event.

‘It gives no help to people in my
constituency. He should go now and not hang around and spend more money
on mugs which are not helping any flood victims. The only mug I can
think of is Lord Smith. What are people going to think who work on the
ground in flooded areas when they find out money is being spent on
expensive meetings at football grounds?

‘Sadly, nothing surprises me any more – this agency has a history of excess and a lack of integrity.’

Lord
Smith is a keen follower of the arts, having been a former Minister for
culture, media and sport and chairman of the Donmar Warehouse theatre
in London since 2003. He has also been a board member for
Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL), an organisation which manages the
rights of performers, since 2007.

The Environment Agency has even
wasted thousands of pounds paying for meeting rooms that had to be
cancelled because staff had to be called away to deal with flooding.
From 2011 to mid-2012, the agency has spent £6,621 on cancelled
meetings. Of that, £3,276 was because of floods.

As much as
£1,188 was spent on one of the cancelled meetings, which was to be
hosted at the four-star Royal York hotel but was called off due to
flooding. Another £750 was spent on a meeting at Nottingham’s four-star
Park Plaza hotel, despite it being cancelled due to flooding. And more
than £700 was spent on cancelling a meeting at the four-star
Mercure Hotel in Manchester.

The Environment Agency also spent
more than £1,200 on two chairs for employees with ‘health issues to
avoid time taken off sick’, £1,056 on 500 pin badges for staff while
working on an Olympics project and £900 on free fishing rods to hand out
to participants in angling events.

Another £1,134 was spent on a
plush dinner at Hotel Du Vin in Bristol for board members of the
Environment Agency and Natural England to discuss ‘joint working and
collaboration’.

Menus at the hotel’s restaurant offer diners
£11.95 pan-roasted scallops for starters, £29 fillet steaks for main,
and £7.95 raspberry soufflés. An EA spokeswoman said it no longer
provided financial support for Gay Pride events but would not say why,
adding: ‘As an employer, the Environment Agency is committed to
diversity, and we support this in a number of ways. ‘We continue
to support Pride, but we no longer provide financial sponsorship.

‘The
Environment Agency has an important role to play in raising awareness
of flood risk. ‘We undertake a number of activities to ensure
people know they are at risk of flooding, and understand the actions
they can take get warnings, and prepare and protect themselves when the
worst does happen.'

A
High Court judge has blocked a plan to build a huge wind turbine amid
an unspoilt historic landscape, in a ruling that will give hope to
campaigners nationwide.

The 284ft turbine, which would have been
visible from more than three miles, was due to stand in an area of
Norfolk countryside dotted with historic churches, a Grade I-listed
Jacobean mansion, and a moated 15th century castle.

Although the
scheme had been rejected by North Norfolk district council, a planning
inspector overturned the decision and gave it the go-ahead – even making
the extraordinary suggestion that the giant rotor blades could actually
draw tourists to the area.

But High Court judge Robin Purchas
yesterday granted a court order to the council quashing the scheme’s
approval, saying the inspector failed to give adequate weight to the
impact on the landscape and historic buildings.

Landowner David
Mack had applied for permission to erect the turbine on his farm at
Cromer Ridge, one of the highest points in Norfolk. Mr Mack, who
operates Pond Farm under the name Genatec, argued it would generate
energy for 665 homes and be ‘a good asset to the community’.

Listed
buildings in the magnificent surrounding countryside include the Grade
I-listed Barningham Hall, which is of Jacobean origin, the 15th century
Baconsthorpe Castle, also Grade I, and four churches listed at Grade
II*.

The council, which originally unanimously refused planning
permission in August 2012, was outraged when planning inspector Alan
Novitzky ruled last April that the huge turbine could be built.

Remarkably,
he declared in his decision that the impact of the giant rotor blades
in the midst of such beauty ‘would be less than substantial’. And in
response to objections that it would deter tourists, he said: ‘For some,
a wind turbine provokes interest rather than distaste.’

The
local authority immediately launched a High Court appeal and argued that
approving the scheme ‘flies in the face of the will of the local
community’. The application had generated 1,800 letters and emails,
1,450 of which had been against the turbine plan.

Council members
argued that allowing the turbine could open the door to similar future
applications, damaging the district’s vital tourism industry.

Yesterday
Judge Purchas ruled that the planning inspector did not comply with the
planning regulations requiring him to have special regard to the
‘desirability of preserving the settings of listed buildings’. But he
added that, had the inspector complied with theses, he could still have
come to the same overall decision.

Last night North Norfolk
district council leader Tom FitzPatrick welcomed the ruling, saying:
‘While a firm supporter of the economic benefits of off-shore wind
energy, the council firmly believes on-shore wind turbines detract from
the unique landscape of this beautiful area.’

Member of the No To
That Turbine protest group councillor David Ramsbotham said: ‘The
decision by the last inspector was disgusting because it did not take
into account the views of local people.

‘A turbine would ruin the
view for miles around. The tourism industry is vital for north Norfolk
as it employs 8,500 people and brings in £400million a year.’

Mr
Mack, who is building a 20-acre solar farm next to the proposed turbine
site, said: ‘We will carry on fighting to get the turbine. The benefits
would far outweigh any impacts.’

No, global warming did NOT cause the storms, says one of the Met Office's most senior experts

Contradicts silly old Slingo

One
of the Met Office’s most senior experts yesterday made a dramatic
intervention in the climate change debate by insisting there is no link
between the storms that have battered Britain and global warming.

Mat
Collins, a Professor in climate systems at Exeter University, said the
storms have been driven by the jet stream – the high-speed current of
air that girdles the globe – which has been ‘stuck’ further south than
usual.

Professor Collins told The Mail on Sunday: ‘There is no
evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in
the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is
outside our knowledge.’

His statement carries particular
significance because he is an internationally acknowledged expert on
climate computer models and forecasts, and his university post is
jointly funded by the Met Office.

Prof Collins is also a senior
adviser – a ‘co-ordinating lead author’ – for the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His statement appears
to contradict Met Office chief scientist Dame Julia Slingo.

Last weekend, she said ‘all the evidence suggests that climate change has a role to play’ in the storms.

Prof
Collins made clear that he believes it is likely global warming could
lead to higher rainfall totals, because a warmer atmosphere can hold
more water. But he said this has nothing to do with the storm conveyor
belt.

He said that when the IPCC was compiling its Fifth
Assessment Report on climate change last year, it discussed whether
warming might affect the jet stream. But, he went on, ‘there was very
low confidence that climate change has any effect on the jet stream
getting stuck’. In the end, the possibility was not even mentioned in
the report.

Prof Collins declined to comment on his difference of
opinion with Dame Julia. Five months ago, in a briefing on the
IPCC report to Ministers, Dame Julia conceded the consequence of warming
for rainfall ‘is not simulated well’ by climate models – though they
are the basis for most of what she and other scientists say about the
effects of climate change.

Last April, after the temperature fell
to -11C in Aberdeenshire, the coldest April temperature for more than
100 years, Dame Julia said the cold winter and spring might also be due
to global warming, because of ice melting in the Arctic.

Meanwhile,
the Met Office has continued to issue questionable long-term forecasts.
In mid-November, two weeks before the first of the storms, it predicted
persistent high pressure for the winter, which was ‘likely to lead to
drier-than-normal conditions across the country’.

It added that
its models showed the probability of the winter being in the driest of
five official categories was 25 per cent. The chances of it being in the
wettest category was 15 per cent.

Infamously, in April 2009, the
Met Office promised a ‘barbecue summer’ – which then turned out to be a
washout. It forecast the winter of 2010 to 2011 would be mild: it was
the coldest for 120 years.

In 2007, the Met Office said that
globally, the decade 2004-2014 would see warming of 0.3C. In fact, the
world has not got any warmer at all in this period.

At the
beginning of 13 of the past 14 years, the Met Office has predicted the
following 12 months would be significantly warmer than they have been.
This, says the sceptic think-tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation,
indicates ‘systemic’ bias.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

ACC/AGW
Alarm: (defined), "concern relating to a perceived negative
environmental or socio-economic effect of ACC/AGW, usually exaggerated
as catastrophic."

Disclaimer: The inclusion of a paper in this
list does not imply a specific personal position to any of the authors.
While certain authors on the list cannot be labeled skeptics (e.g.
Harold Brooks, Roger Pielke Jr., Roger Pielke Sr.) their paper(s) or
results from their paper(s) can still support skeptic's arguments
against ACC/AGW alarm. Various papers are mutually exclusive and should
be considered independently. This list will be updated and corrected as
necessary.

This is a resource for skeptics not a list of skeptics.

Counting
Method: Only Peer-Reviewed papers are counted. Supplemental papers are
not counted but listed as references in defense of various papers; *
Addendums, Comments, Corrections, Erratum, Rebuttals, Replies,
Responses, and Submitted papers.

This is a dynamic list that is
routinely updated. When a significant new number of peer-reviewed papers
is added the list title will be updated with the new larger number. The
list intentionally includes an additional 10+ peer-reviewed papers as a
margin of error at all times, which gradually increases between
updates. Thus the actual number of peer-reviewed papers on the list can
be much greater than stated.

Criteria for Inclusion: All counted
papers must be peer-reviewed, published in a peer-reviewed journal and
support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW or ACC/AGW Alarm.

Criteria
for Removal: Papers will only be removed if it is determined by the
editor that they have not properly met the criteria for inclusion or
have been retracted by the journal. No paper will be removed because of
the existence of a criticism or published correction.

Formatting:
All papers are cited as: "Paper Name, Journal Name, Volume, Issue or
Number, Pages, Date and Authors". All Supplemental papers are preceded
by an asterisk and italicized; * Addendums, Comments, Corrections,
Erratum, Replies, Responses and Submitted papers. Ordering of the papers
is chronological per category.

Purpose: To provide a resource
for peer-reviewed papers that support skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW
or ACC/AGW Alarm and to prove that these papers exist contrary to claims
otherwise;

The
Army has been called in, hundreds of families have been forced to
evacuate their homes, and small businesses are wondering if they’ll ever
be able to reopen.

But it’s not bad news for all the inhabitants of the Thames Valley. The river’s population of Depressed River Mussels is safe.

As
residents faced an uncertain future, it emerged the Environment Agency
rejected calls to dredge the flood-hit lower reaches of the Thames
because of the presence of the endangered mollusc.

In a 2010
report, seen by the Mail, they ruled out dredging between Datchet and
Staines because the river bed was home to the vulnerable creatures.

And
even though a public consultation indicated support for de-silting
work, the quango said it would be ‘environmentally unacceptable’ due to
the ‘high impact on aquatic species’.

But last night a spokesman
at the Environment Agency said the report on mussels was ‘badly worded’
and the presence of the mussels would not have been the only argument
against dredging.

‘If protected species are living in a river and
dredging would reduce the risk of flooding then we would ensure that
dredging occurs without having a serious impact on wildlife,’ he said.
‘This is case not just for the Thames but all rivers.’

But he
added; ‘An independent study carried out by engineering firm Halcrow has
shown that the natural activity of the Thames removes significantly
more silt than mechanical dredging would do.’

The revelation came as it emerged that EU waste regulations have made regular dredging on Britain’s rivers uneconomic.

Documents
released under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the
disposal of silt became so complex and expensive that it was more
attractive to take advantage of financial incentives given by Brussels
to conservation schemes.

This Despite the Agency describing that
stretch of the river as one of the ‘largest and most at-risk developed
and undefended flood plains in England’.

Hundreds of houses on the Thames are presently under water and there are fears the situation could get worse.

The
Depressed River Mussel, the name of which comes from the flattened
shape of its shell, is categorised by environmentalists as ‘vulnerable
and threatened’, with the number of rivers it lives in declining by 30
per cent in the past 25 years.

However, some believe the UK
actually has the healthiest populations in Europe, with the possible
exception of Finland. One river - the Waveney - may have 1.2million of
the mussels alone.

The agency’s report said: ‘A number of
protected and threatened species are known to be present in the waters
of the Lower Thames, including the Depressed River Mussel, which is a UK
Biodiversity Action Plan species, and on the IUCN Red List as
near-threatened.

‘This poses a constraint on any works to be undertaken within the River Thames itself, especially activities such as dredging.’

A
‘strategy appraisal report’, compiled by the agency into the prospect
of defence works on the Lower Thames in August 2010, said dredging was
one of the ‘options rejected at preliminary stage’.

However, the
previous year the Agency held a public consultation with residents along
the banks of the Thames, and the official report shows that they
thought ‘dredging of pinch points of the River Thames is essential to
provide interim relief from flooding’.

Tory MPs said they were
appalled that the Environment Agency appeared to be more interested in
promoting the welfare of molluscs than householders.

Douglas
Carswell said: ‘Ever since we have given responsibility for flood
defences to this central quango, they’ve elevated the interests of the
natural over and above the human.

'We can see the consequences
today. There is nothing nice about letting our rivers and coastline
revert to nature. London used to be a swamp, and if we leave these
clowns in charge it will return to that.’

Alok Sharma, Tory MP
for the flood-affected Thames-side constituency of Reading West, said:
‘The priority has to be protecting people and property not mussels.

Ultimately, any decision on dredging any river has to take into account the impact on communities living further downstream.’

Regular
dredging was undertaken for 50 years on the stretch of river from
Datchet to Staines following the 1947 floods, but was stopped in 1996
when the agency took over responsibility.

Britain
has been damaged by ‘unthinking climate change worship’, a senior Tory
minister claimed today as the coalition parties clashed over going
green.

Lib Dem Energy Secretary Ed Davey is using the floods
crisis to launch an extraordinary attack on ‘diabolical’ and ‘wilfully
ignorant, head in the sand, nimbyist’ Conservatives who question global
warming.

But Conservative energy minister Michael Fallon has hit back, insisting now is not the time for ‘political’ squabbling.

The
storms which have wreaked havoc across much of England and Wales have
reignited the debate about the role of climate change on altering
weather patterns.

In a speech to Institute for Public Policy
Research, Mr Davey insisted the disaster that has befallen much of
England demonstrates ‘the possible consequences of a world in which
extreme weather events are much more likely’.

Mr Davey said
climate change denial and Euro-scepticism are a ‘diabolical cocktail’
that threatens efforts to tackle global warming.

The attempt to
exploit the flooding crisis to attack the Tories came as David Cameron
came under pressure over his ‘money is no object’ pledge on aiding
victims.

But Mr Fallon, the junior Tory minister in Mr Davey’s
department, condemned the outburst by his boss. He told the Standard:
‘This is not a time for Coalition squabbling. We should all be focusing
on getting people’s power back on and protecting the sub stations that
are in danger of being flooded.

‘Unthinking climate change
worship has damaged British industry and put up consumer bills.
'It’s David Cameron who is cutting green taxes and steering Europe away
from artificial targets.’

Mr Davey’s intervention will be seen as
an attack on Environment Secretary Owen Paterson in particular, who
harbours doubts about the degree to which man has contributed to global
warming.

Mr Davey added: ‘From the right, fringes of the
Conservative Party and Ukip are parroting the arguments of the most
discredited climate change deniers – seizing on any anomaly in the
climate data to attempt to discredit the whole.

‘This is
undermining public trust in the scientific evidence for climate change –
overwhelming though it is. And we can see around us today the possible
consequences of a world in which extreme weather events are much more
likely. This type of climate change denying conservatism is wilfully
ignorant, head in the sand, nimbyist conservatism.

‘And when
married to the europhobia innate to parts of the Conservative Party, you
have a diabolical cocktail that threatens the whole long-term structure
of UK climate change and energy policy.

'If you accept the logic of climate change, you have to accept the logic of European co-operation to tackle it.’

He
was backed by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who said: ‘It’s not a
secret that in the Conservative Party you’ve got a fair number of people
who just don’t accept the reality of climate change.’

Speaking
on his weekly radio phone-in, the Lib Dem minister told LBC 97.3: ‘These
very violent and volatile weather patterns are linked in some shape or
form to climate change.

‘Other people are entitled to say, no we
think it’s all baloney, but I think at a certain point you’ve just got
to say, look come on, how many more times do you need to be told by
people who know what they’re talking about that this happening, and
we’ve got to do something about it.’

Former Conservative
Chancellor Lord Lawson insisted there was no evidence that extreme
weather was linked to climate change, and urged scientists to admit they
did not know what was happening.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today
programme: 'I think we want to focus not on this extremely speculative
and uncertain area. I don’t blame the climate scientists for not
knowing.

'Climate and weather is quite extraordinarily complex
and this is a very new form of science. All I blame them for is
pretending they know when they don’t.'

An
Obama Department of Energy official told the House Energy and Commerce
Committee today that Administration policies aimed at coal fired
electric generation would increase the wholesale cost of electricity by
70 to 80 percent.

The admission that Obama environmental policy
proscriptions targeting the coal fired utility industry would
dramatically increase the cost of turning on the lights, as well as
heating and cooling homes is news. But this Administration’s gross
disregard for the least of these in our society is the headline even
though it is not surprising to those paying attention.

As the
Energy Department is trying to almost double the price of coal fired
electric generation, the EPA has regulations that would ban the
production and sale of 80 percent of wood burning stoves in the country.
With 12 percent of all homes in the U.S. primarily dependent upon
burning wood for heat and cooking, the EPA measure will hit right at the
heart of many people’s ability to stay warm in the long, cold winters.

Apparently,
the Obama Administration would rather that people—who are struggling to
keep their heads above water under the yoke of his failed economic
policies—freeze to death as the federal government strips away
affordable and available home heating options.

This is liberal
compassion. And it can be anticipated that more tax dollars flow
to government programs to help the indigent with their heating costs,
now that their environmental policies have exacerbated the need.

After
all, the utility company gets the blame when electricity costs go up,
not the federal government that deliberately drove those costs through
the roof.

And no one can figure out why they can’t find a wood
stove anymore for their home, so they are tied to the electrical grid
for heating and cooking.

But politicians get credit when they
give these same people other people’s money to pay for some of the
increased costs, and the very victims of the crazy environmental
policies that caused the problems then reward the very politicians
responsible with their votes.

In a nutshell, that is the big
government environmentalist scam. Create market scarcity through
regulations, meet scarcity with government handouts which entices your
victims to vote for you and repeat process. All the while, our
nation’s economy gets destroyed.

ClimateDepot
founder Marc Morano ridiculed Olympians who signed onto a letter urging
a U.N. global warming treaty in the wake of low snow totals for the
Sochi Olympics, noting that record snow is occurring throughout the
world and they picked “the most southern Russian city with palm trees.”

Morano
spoke with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto about the letter, which saw over 100
Olympic athletes write a letter claiming climate change “threatens” this
and future Winter Olympics. They highlighted the importance of signing a
comprehensive, global climate change treaty at a 2015 U.N. meeting on
global warming.

But Morano pointed out that Sochi’s position in
Russia — thousands of miles south of Moscow and not far from the Turkish
maritime border — lends the resort town an almost tropical feel that
doesn’t produce much snow. Meanwhile, vast swathes of the Northern
Hemisphere, including the storm-socked East Coast, remain buried under
snow and ice.

When
I first read, many months ago, that the notorious US climate scientist
Michael Mann was suing the notorious right-wing bastard Mark Steyn for
defamation, I admit that I felt a little piqued.

Obviously a
libel trial is not something any sane person would wish to court; and
naturally I’m a massive fan of Steyn’s. Nevertheless, after all the work
I’ve dedicated over the years to goading Mann, I found it a bit bloody
annoying that Steyn — a relative latecomer to the climate change debate —
should have been the one who ended up stealing all my courtroom glory.

What
made me doubly jealous was that this was a case Steyn was guaranteed to
win. In the unlikely event it came to court — which I didn’t think it
would, given Mann’s longstanding aversion to any form of public
disclosure regarding his academic research — the case would fall down on
the fact that defamation is so hard to prove in the US, especially when
it involves publicly funded semi-celebrities who are expected to take
this sort of thing on the chin.

Since then, though, much has
changed. It now looks — go to Steynonline.com for the full story — as if
Steyn is going to be up there on his own, fighting and financing his
case without the support of his magazine, National Review; that the
outcome is not as certain as it seemed at the beginning; and that this
hero deserves all the help we can give him.

Why? Well, the fact
that I even have to explain this shows what a cowardly, snivelling,
career-safe, intellectually feeble, morally compromised age we inhabit.
By rights, Mann v Steyn should be the 21st-century equivalent of the
Scopes monkey trial, with believers in free speech, proponents of the
scientific method and sympathetic millionaires and billionaires all
piling in to Steyn’s defence with op eds, learned papers, and lavish
funds to buy the hottest of hotshot lawyers.

Instead, what do I
read? Crap like, ‘Steyn’s out of order: he shouldn’t have been so rude
about the judge who mishandled the initial hearing.’ (OK, maybe he
shouldn’t — but what are you supposed to say about judges who mishandle
your case? ‘Nice job, ma’am’?) Crap like, ‘And he’s going to take the
National Review down with him.’ (No he isn’t. That’s what libel
insurance is for.) Crap like, ‘Well, he shouldn’t have used
such-and-such a word or written that polemic in quite so inflammatory
and offensive a way.’ (Yes that’s right. Polemics should be cautious,
dry, legalistic, tame. Otherwise people might read them and have their
minds changed.)

So let’s just cut through that crap and remind
ourselves briefly what we know about the plaintiff. Michael Mann was an
obscure young physicist-turned-climatologist who rose without trace in
1998 with the publication in Nature of his ‘hockey stick’ chart showing
dramatic and apparently unprecedented late-20th-century global warming.

There
followed almost instant fame, on which Mann has traded ever since —
gaining tenure at Penn State University, drawing millions in public
funding for research, often called on by the Guardian and the New York
Times to sum up the state of climate science. Al Gore used a version of
Mann’s hockey stick in his Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth. The IPCC
used it five times in its Third Assessment Report and promoted Mann to
lead author.

But the hockey stick, on which Mann’s reputation
largely rests, was and is a nonsense. It obliterates the medieval warm
period; it is unduly reliant on proxy data — bristlecone pine samples —
which are known to be unreliable; it is dependent on a flawed algorithm
which, according to every statistical authority who has ever looked at
the subject, creates the same hockey-stick data almost regardless of the
information you feed into it.

Surely if you’re going to sue
someone for defamation, this must involve an examination of the
reputation said to be worth defending. What would this say about Mann,
onlie begetter of arguably the most comprehensively discredited artefact
in recent climate science history?

And if Mann’s scientific
reputation really matters to him so much, maybe he ought first to do a
bit of reading on how world-class scientists actually behave. He could
do worse than read Paul Johnson’s account in Modern Times of how
Einstein proposed his general theory of relativity. Einstein insisted
that before his claims were taken seriously, they must first be verified
by empirical observation, in the form of three specific tests. Of the
final one — the red shift — Einstein wrote: ‘If it were proved that this
effect does not exist in nature then the whole theory would have to be
abandoned.’

Einstein’s rigour and integrity inspired Karl Popper
to form his influential theories on falsification: that a scientific
theory is only useful if it contains the key to its own destruction.
This, critics argue, is the fundamental flaw with anthropogenic global
warming theory: it has been couched in such a way as to be
unfalsifiable; it is being kept alive not by science and free enquiry,
but by the kind of appeals to authority we see exemplified by Mann’s
response to Steyn’s criticisms.

Mann may or may not have a case
against Steyn on technical grounds; but in terms of the bigger argument
about empiricism, free speech and the scientific method, he doesn’t have
a leg to stand on. Steyn gets this and — as he did in his case against
the Ontario Human Rights Committee — is laying his neck on the line not
solely because he’s a show-off and an awkward sod but for the greater
cause of western civilisation. Now go to his website Steynonline.com and
read what you can do to support him.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

13 February, 2014

Time to reform the Endangered Species Act

By Marita Noon

If
you find oil or natural gas on your property, the value goes up. If you
find an endangered species, your land becomes virtually worthless
because the critter prevents productive use.

Most people would be
excited to have a Jed-Clampet moment when, while hunting for dinner,
the shot resulted in bubbling crude coming up from the ground. Like the
Clampet family, your life would change dramatically. Your land would
suddenly be worth more than you’d ever dreamed!

If, while hunting
for dinner, you instead find an endangered species — the half-jest,
half-serious advice would be “shoot, shovel and shut up.” Kent
Holsinger, a Colorado attorney whose work centers around endangered
species issues, told me that he has seen many landowners lose
significant value due to a listed species being found on their property.

The
Endangered Species Act (ESA) was signed into law in 1973 by President
Richard Nixon to preserve, protect and recover key domestic species.
Though well-intentioned at the start, the ESA has since been used as a
tool to hinder or block economic activity from logging and farming to
mining and oil-and-gas development — often to protect species that don’t
truly need it.

In my book, Energy Freedom, I feature an entire
chapter on the spotted owl because it gives us a beginning-to-end case
history on the ESA. The spotted owl was listed as an endangered species
on June 26, 1990, and has since shut down a substantial part of federal
timber harvest and threatens logging on private lands.

I start
the chapter with these words: “It is hard to imagine a bigger failure —
or a greater success — depending upon which side of the issue you stand.
If you strive for open and honest government policy that is
straightforward about its goals, this twenty-year experiment has failed.
If you believe the end justifies the means, regardless of the cost in
life or livelihood, then the spotted owl represents a great success.”

I
sum it up this way: “the spotted owl threatens private property rights,
kills jobs, and puts the health of the forest in peril.” All that, and
the owls have not “recovered.”

I’ve been very active in the fight
to prevent the listing of the sand dune lizard in the oil patch of West
Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin — which produces about 15 percent
of U.S. oil. (Thanks to conservation agreements with private industry,
the lizard was not listed.) I emceed the Roswell, New Mexico, rally to
draw attention to the five-state lesser prairie chicken listing threat —
which would, again, impact oil-and-gas development.

(The Western
Governors Association has been working with the Western Association of
Fish and Wildlife Agencies to develop a similar range-wide plan to
protect the chicken while allowing for economic development. The listing
decision is due by March 30, 2014.)

Coming up is the greater
sage grouse — “a chicken-sized bird that has been in decline across
large portions of its 11-state Western range. A final decision on
whether to protect sage grouse is due next year and could result in
wide-ranging restrictions on oil and gas development, agriculture and
other economic activity,” reports the Associated Press (AP).

The delta smelt—that most of us first heard of in 2009 — is, once again, back in the news.

California
is facing a severe drought that Governor Jerry Brown has called “an
emergency.” A recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article examines “How
green politics has exacerbated the state’s growing shortages.” It lists
water rationing, forbidden sprinkler use, and restaurants serving water
by-request-only as some of the ramifications of California’s historic
drought.

But, the WSJ states: “Suffering the most are farmers
south of the delta whose water allocations have plunged over the last
two decades due to endangered-species protections.” It continues:
“California’s biggest water hog is the three-inch smelt, which can
divert up to one million acre-feet in a wet year. In 2008, federal
regulators at the prodding of green groups restricted water exports
south to protect the smelt.”

The Bakersfield Californian cites
Larry Starrah, a local farmer, whose family has been “forced to let
1,000 acres of productive almond trees die this year for lack of water.”
The January 22 article faults the “delta smelt and other fish protected
under the Endangered Species Act.”

(Note: if your property has
lost value due to an endangered species finding or if the federal
government suddenly decides it is a protected wetland in violation of
the National Wetlands Act — which can happen even though it has never
been wet — have the property reassessed. In such cases, others have
successfully had their property taxes dramatically lowered due to the
fact it can never developed and is therefore less valuable. Imagine how
the attitude about ESA and restrictions on wetlands would change if
county governments’ property tax collections and revenues plummeted due
to such punitive designations.)

To help alleviate the California
water crisis, House Speaker John Boehner was in Bakersfield, with
lawmakers from California, to tout legislation that would, according to
Reuters: “roll back environmental rules limiting how much water agencies
can pump out of the fragile San Joaquin-Sacramento River delta in dry
years.” At a press conference Boehner said: “It’s nonsense that a
bureaucracy would favor fish over people.” But, that is what the ESA
requires.

The WSJ reports: Senator Dianne Feinstein “and her
fellow California Senator Barbara Boxer and Rep. Jim Costa of Fresno
urged federal agencies to ‘exercise their discretion in regulatory
decision-making within the confines of the law to deliver more water to
those whose health and livelihoods depend on it’” — which indicates that
even the most radical of liberal politicians realize the problems they
have created.

No wonder, many people believe it is time for the ESA to be overhauled.

In
a letter to the WSJ, Greg Schildwachter applauds environmentalist
Timothy Male for acknowledging that the ESA has flaws, as he did in his
January 16 op-ed: “A green olive branch on endangered species.”

Schildwachter
sums up the problem: “The ESA leaves rights to property and species up
to anyone’s guess and, therefore, to no one’s satisfaction.” He also
offers a solution: “Before ESA, starting in the 1930s, wildlife
conservation produced results. Sportsmen and sporting-equipment
industries joined with government to restore deer, elk and other
then-depleted wildlife.

This worked politically because it added —
instead of taking — value. It worked in policy because money improved
field work instead of sharpening legal briefs. Something like it can
work today.” Within his letter, Schildwachter points out: “The Interior
Department inspector general concluded that lawsuits ‘are driving nearly
everything [FWS] does in the ESA arena.’”

In a second letter
published in the January 31 WSJ, Kyle Donovan called the lawsuits
brought by environmental groups: “nuisance litigation.” his op-ed, Male
says: The “mixed record on wildlife restoration — and the real and
perceived impact it has on business — has turned the ESA into a partisan
playing field.”

The aforementioned AP piece states: “Throughout
its history, the law has faced criticism from business interests,
Republicans and others.” And continues: “Those complaints grew louder in
recent months after federal wildlife officials agreed to consider
protections for more than 250 additional species under settlement terms
in lawsuits brought by environmental groups” — an arrangement frequently
referred to as “sue and settle.” If federal officials can add hundreds
more “endangered species” to their protected list, development can be
easily halted almost everywhere in the country.

The ESA has few
friends outside of environmental lobbyists and attorneys. It was last
updated in 1988. Holsinger explained it to me this way: “When the ESA
was last amended, the Soviet Union was a superpower and Def Leppard was
on the pop charts. It is high time that Congress modernized and improved
this law to reflect what we now know.”

As we’ve seen with the
sand dune lizard—and hope to see with the lesser prairie chicken — there
are ways to successfully assist species that are truly in danger
without putting species in conflict with people.

This is the goal
of a brand-new report released on February 4 by the ESA Congressional
Working Group led by Representatives Doc Hastings (R-WA) and Cynthia
Lummis (R-WY) and eleven others. Formed on May 19, 2013, The Working
Group, according to the mission and purpose statement, “sought to
examine the ESA from a variety of viewpoints and angles; receive input
on how the ESA was working and being implemented and how and whether it
could be updated to be more effective for both people and species.”

The
report reflects hundreds of comments from outside individuals and
testimony from nearly 70 witnesses who appeared before a Working Group
forum and House Natural Resources Committee hearings. It concludes:
“After more than 40 years, sensible, targeted reforms would not only
improve the eroding credibility of the Act, but would ensure it is
implemented more effectively for species and people.”

Rep. Lummis points out the tremendous conservation advances that have been made since the ESA became law:

“The
American people have grown by leaps and bounds in their understanding
of conservation, their willingness to conserve species, and their
ability to conserve species — the ESA needs to grow with them. The ESA
is stuck in a litigation driven model. This outdated model hinders the
boots on the ground conservation we should be harnessing to actually
recover endangered species, not just spout flowery rhetoric about the
law in courtrooms. Our report is an exciting opportunity to bring the
ESA into the next millennia.”

The report recommends constructive changes to the ESA in the following four categories:

Ensuring greater transparency and prioritization of ESA with a focus on species recovery and delisting;

Reducing ESA litigation and encouraging settlement reform;

Empowering states, tribes, local governments and private landowners on ESA decisions affecting them and their property; and

Requiring more transparency and accountability of ESA data and science.

Regarding
the proposed changes, the AP states: “experts say broad changes to one
of the nation’s cornerstone environmental laws are unlikely given the
pervasive partisan divide in Washington, D.C.” And: “Given the current
level of rancor between Democrats and Republicans, academics who track
the law were skeptical that the latest calls for change would succeed.”

Such
statements highlight the importance of supporting the representatives
behind the new report, encouragement of all other representatives and
senators to sign on to the proposed reforms—and the importance of the
2014 election. As the AP points out: the ESA “enjoys fervent support
among many environmentalists, whose Democratic allies on Capitol Hill
have thwarted past proposals for change.”

Instead of shoot,
shovel and shut up, key domestic species that should be preserved,
protected and recovered would be better served by targeted legislative
changes that can truly benefit species and people.

Lake Superior hasn’t completely frozen over in two decades.But
an expert on Great Lakes ice says there’s a “very high likelihood” that
the three-quadrillion-gallon lake will soon be totally covered with ice
thanks to this winter’s record-breaking cold.

The ice cover on the largest freshwater lake in the world hit a 20-year record of 91 percent on Feb. 5, 1994.

Jay
Austin, associate professor at the Large Lakes Observatory in Duluth,
Minn., told CNSNews.com that he expects that record will be broken this
winter when the most northern of the Great Lakes becomes totally
shrouded in ice.

The thickness of the ice on Lake Superior
“varies tremendously,” from a very thin sheet in some areas near the
coast to several feet thick in other spots, Austin says. The
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports
that the mean thickness of the lake ice is 26 cm, or a little over 10
inches.

Lake Superior ice thickness

Austin attributes the
large amount of ice on the lake to the “extraordinary cold winter we’ve
had,” pointing out that Duluth recently experienced an all-time record
of 23 straight days of below-zero temperatures.

The previous record of 22 days was set in 1936 and tied in 1963, according to the National Weather Service.

Austin,
who studies the effect of lake ice, predicts that it will have a “very
strong influence” on the regional climate this summer, with the “air
conditioning [lake] effect” more pronounced than usual.

“Typically,
the lake will start warming up in late June, but it will be August
before we see that this year,” Austin told CNSNews.com.

As of
February 10th, ice covered 80.4 percent of all the Great Lakes, compared
to 38.4 percent last winter, according to NOAA. That’s considerably
higher than the lake’s long-term average of 51.4 percent under ice.

The
record for maximum ice coverage of 94.7 percent was set in 1979. The
lowest ice accumulation occurred in 2002, when just 9.5 percent of the
surface of the Great Lakes was frozen solid.

EPA's New Clean Coal Rule Would Increase Power Prices by 70 to 80 Percent

Well
it appears the Department of Energy, which has long lobbied for more
clean energy, is now finding that this clean energy is a lot more
expensive than they thought it would be. The Obama administration’s plan
to fight global warming was to limit carbon dioxide from new power
plants. So in order for new coal plants to be built, they would need to
spend a lot of money on carbon capture and storage technology.

I
guess the EPA then forgot to think about the next logical step. If the
power plants have to spend more money on this technology, they are going
to have to pay for it somehow; hence the higher prices for consumers.

The
deputy assistant secretary for clean coal at the Department of Energy
told House lawmakers that this new technology will cause wholesale
electricity prices to rise by 70 or 80 percent.

So what doesn’t
seem to be clear is why this even becoming law. This is not helping the
American people. Even though these are the estimates for the first
generation of increases, the second generation is not much better and is
still higher than what we currently pay.

I don’t know about you,
but I thought the government was supposed to be helping me. Instead
these new “clean coal” laws are hurting me. Energy is already so
expensive, and without exploring more energy resources, we are not going
to be able to afford this much longer.

It’s
the kind of scene we’d like to think we’d put behind us. Yet here it is
again. How would you like to look outside and see masked radicals
with torches on your front lawn?

That’s what greeted Mark Maki
and his family. Maki was targeted for this shameful act of
intimidation because he is a member of the board of Enbridge Energy
Management which works with oil pipelines.

The masked
perpetrators refused to identify themselves, or their group, claiming
only that they represent “the people.” Their banner includes the
words “solidarity means attack!” The age of the eco-terrorist is
upon us.

This comes at a time when both parties are coming around
to the realization that pipelines are the safest, most economical and
environmentally sound way to move petroleum, particularly after several
bad train accidents.

The radicals are in danger of losing the
pipeline issue and they know it. Their response is to act out and
threaten sabotage.

Not too long ago Marc Morano, who edits
CFACT’s award-winning Climate Depot Morano interviews pipeline
protesternews and information service, asked an anti-pipeline protestor
if they were ready to engage in “eco-terrorism.” The protestor
replied that they would do “whatever it takes” to prevent the
project. It appears now that such threats are more than mere
hyperbole. Law enforcement needs to be on alert.

The most
high profile pipeline project in the country right now is the Keystone
XL. It has been the subject of years of wasteful and foolish
obstruction. It is time for President Obama to end all delays,
listen to his own State Department, pick up his vaunted pen, sign his
name and authorize Keystone XL once and for all.

Paul Driessen has the facts on Keystone XL at CFACT.org. They are important.

Mister
President, the time has come. Authorize Keystone XL today.
Will you side with ignorance, radicalism and intimidation, or the
economic, energy and environmental needs of the nation?

No
American, no matter who they are or where they stand, should ever fear
threats from masked radicals with torches outside their home again.

On
22 January, the outgoing European Commission (EC) proposed new EU-wide
CO2 emissions and renewables targets for 2030 which will be discussed by
the European Council in the next 12 months.

This announcement
was reported in the media as if the EU has already adopted these
aggressive, new targets. However, this is not the case.

If
agreed by the European Council, the CO2 emissions target would only be
offered as a conditional pledge during the 2015 international
negotiations on climate change in Paris.

In its press release,
the Commission states: “The Commission invites the Council and the
European Parliament to agree by the end of 2014 that the EU should
pledge the 40% reduction in early 2015 as part of the international
negotiations on a new global climate agreement due to be concluded in
Paris at the end of 2015.”

In light of deep splits among EU member states, there are considerable uncertainties about what will happen to these proposals:

(i) There is no certainty that the proposed targets will remain as stringent as currently proposed.

(ii) There is no guarantee of a final EU agreement before the UN climate summit in Paris in 2015.

(iii) In the event that no global CO2 emissions treaty is agreed in 2015, the EU’s conditional pledge may not be enacted.

This
uncertainty has significant implications for the UK’s climate policy,
with a real prospect of UK emissions targets being scaled back
significantly in line with EU targets.

Reducing water consumption at solar thermal plants raises costs and decreases power production

California’s
ambitious goal of getting a third of its electricity from renewable
energy sources by 2030 is being tested by its driest year on record,
part of a multiyear drought that’s seriously straining water supplies.
The state plan relies heavily on solar thermal technology, but this type
of solar power also typically consumes huge quantities of water.

The
drought is already forcing solar thermal power plant developers to use
alternative cooling approaches to reduce water consumption. This will
both raise costs and decrease electricity production, especially in the
summer months when demand for electricity is high. Several research
groups across the country are developing ways to reduce those costs and
avoid reductions in power output.

Solar thermal power plants use
large fields of mirrors to concentrate sunlight and heat water,
producing steam that spins power-plant turbines. Utilities like them
because their power output is much less variable than power from banks
of solar panels (see “BrightSource Pushes Ahead on Another Massive Solar
Thermal Plant” and “Sharper Computer Models Clear the Way for More Wind
Power”).

The drawbacks are that solar thermal plants generate
large amounts of waste heat, and they consume a lot of water for
cooling, which is usually done by evaporating water. Solar thermal
plants can consume twice as much water as fossil fuel power plants, and
one recently proposed solar thermal project would have consumed about
500 million gallons of water a year.

A technology called dry
cooling, which has started appearing in power plants in the last 10
years or so, can cut that water consumption by 90 percent. Instead of
evaporating water to cool the plant, the technology keeps the water
contained in a closed system. As it cools the power plant, the water
heats up and is then circulated through huge, eight-story cooling towers
that work much like the radiator in a car.

Dry cooling
technology costs from two and a half to five times more than
conventional evaporative cooling systems. And it doesn’t work well on
hot days, sometimes forcing power plant operators to cut back on power
production. In the summer, this can decrease power production by 10 to
15 percent, says Jessica Shi, a technical program manager at the
Electric Power Research Institute. On extremely hot days, power
production might be reduced even more than that.

One approach to
solving this problem is to oversize the cooling system so that it can
deliver enough cooling even on hot days. That’s the approach taken by
the developers of California’s new Ivanpah solar thermal plant, which is
about to start production (see “World’s Largest Solar Thermal Power
Plant Delivers Power for the First Time”). But it adds to the cost of an
already expensive system.

More than a dozen research groups
funded by the Electric Power Research Institute and the National Science
Foundation are developing ways to avoid the current problems with dry
cooling technology. One project uses a conventional evaporative cooling
system but captures the water vapor to reuse it. Others are working to
improve the efficiency of dry cooling towers so that they can be made
smaller and cheaper. A third approach is to use nanoparticles in the
cooling fluid to improve its ability to absorb heat. And new designs
that improve air circulation could reduce the size and cost of cooling
towers.

The drought and water shortage that California is
undergoing will increase the costs associated with solar thermal power,
but they aren’t likely to bring the spread of the technology screeching
to a halt. While dry cooling costs far more than conventional water
cooling, it accounts for a relatively small part of the total cost of a
plant—about five percent of around $2 billion.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

12 February, 2014

Evidence points to climate change role in floods, says official UK scientist

Dame Julia is just a silly old lady who does not know what she is talking about. Her agency predicted a DRY winter. That's how much she knows and understands about the weather

Climate
change almost certainly lies behind the storms that have been lashing
Britain this winter, according to the Met Office’s chief scientist.

Dame Julia Slingo said while there was not yet “definitive proof”, “all the evidence” pointed to a role for the phenomenon.

She also delivered a grim warning that the country should prepare itself for more similar events in future.

The
comments came at a briefing for journalists as the latest wave of
storms crashed into southern England. It is the strongest link yet made
by the Met Office between the intense weather and climate change, and
backs David Cameron’s remark last month that he “very much suspects” a
connection.

“The severe weather in the UK coincided with
exceptionally cold weather in Canada and the USA,” the document said.
“These extreme weather events on both sides of the Atlantic were linked
to a persistent pattern of perturbations to the jet stream over the
Pacific Ocean and North America.

“There is a strong association
with the stormy weather experienced in the UK during December and
January and the up-stream perturbations to the jet stream over North
America and the North Pacific.

“The North Atlantic jet stream has
also been unusually strong; this can be linked to an unusually strong
westerly phase of the stratospheric Quasi-biennial oscillation deep
polar vortex and strong polar night jet.”

Dame Julia said none of the individual storms had been exceptional but the “clustering and persistence” were extremely unusual.

“We have seen exceptional weather. We cannot say it’s unprecedented, but it is certainly exceptional,” she said.

“Is
it consistent with what we might expect from climate change? Of course,
as yet there can be no definitive answer on the particular events that
we have seen this winter, but if we look at the broader base of evidence
then we see things that support the premise that climate change has
been making a contribution.”

Recent studies have suggested storms
are developing a more southerly track, and that has been “typical” of
the weather patterns here over the winter.

“One of the most
unusual aspects of the winter’s weather has been the southerly track of
the storms. We expect them to go well north of Scotland,” Dame Julia
said.

“They have been slamming into the southern part of Britain.
We also know that the subtropical, tropical Atlantic is now quite a lot
warmer than it was 50 years ago.

‘Basic physics’

“The air
that enters this storm system comes from that part of the Atlantic
where it is obviously going to be warmer and carrying more moisture.
“This is just basic physics.

“We also now have strong evidence
that extreme daily rainfall rates are becoming more intense. That is
emerging in the UK records, and it is seen very definitely around the
world in other countries like India and China. [But not in Australia].

“There
is indeed as far as I can see no evidence to counter the premise that a
warmer world will lead to more intense daily and hourly heavy rain
events.”

Dame Julia said sea levels were expected to rise by a
foot over time, causing more problems for those trying to deal with
flooding. “That might not sound a lot, but when you are looking at storm
surges, when you are looking at moving water from the Somerset Levels
out to sea, it does matter,” she added.

British environmental agency responsible for much of Britain's disastrous floods

They want a drained area to "revert to nature". Too bad about the people living there

The
Environment Agency put water voles, greater water parsnips, silver
diving beetles and large marsh grasshoppers ahead of people in the
flood-ravaged Somerset Levels

A 250-page agency document issued
in 2008 shows that years of neglecting vital dredging which used to let
water drain away much faster is part of a deliberate policy to increase
flooding in the areas now worst affected.

The policy was revealed
as agency director of operations David Jordan angered residents
yesterday by calling the flood defences a ‘success story’.

He
said: ‘We need to recognise that 1.3?million other properties would have
flooded if these flood defences had not been built. That is the success
story, if you like, that we are talking about.’

Tory MP Ian
Liddell-Grainger, whose Bridgwater & West Somerset constituency has
been among the worst affected areas said: ‘What a stupid man – this is
absolute stupidity and arrogance. This is a tragedy and disaster.’

The
2008 agency document shows the objective for the Levels was to ‘take
action to increase the frequency of flooding to deliver benefits locally
or elsewhere’.

In the document the agency says flooding on the
Somerset Levels 'is not in itself a major problem' because it will be
beneficial to wildlife including greater water parsnips (right) and
greater silver beetles (left)

But
it added: ‘This policy option involves a strategic increase in flooding
in allocated areas [the area of the Levels on the Rivers Tone and
Parrett now underwater], but is not intended to affect the risk to
individual properties.’

Under European Union directives, the
policy document says, ‘we have obligations to protect the habitats
that have developed hand in hand with the man-made flood-risk
infrastructure’.

‘From an economic point of view, a lot of money
is required to protect relatively little when considered at a £ per
square kilometre point of view,’ it says, adding that farming and
housing, first established 250 years ago when the Levels were drained,
might suffer from what it called the ‘redistribution’ of future floods.

However, the use of the land by humans was ‘based on historical practice which should be challenged in the future’.

‘This
will have social and financial implications which will have to be
considered carefully?.?.?. We are aware that challenging centuries of
drainage operations may be difficult, and it requires good communication
and co-operation between various authorities.’

The document says
the agency might have to close pumping stations built to move
floodwater from the fields into the rivers and aqueducts: ‘It is likely
that there are some pumping stations that are not economic.

‘Many
pumping stations are relatively old and in some cases difficult to
maintain?.?.?. Redistributing floodwater, while logical in some areas,
may be difficult to promote because individual farms will be affected in
different ways.

'From an agricultural perspective, some may gain financially but some may also lose.’

The
document, the Parrett Catchment Flood Management Plan, went through
five successive drafts, the last in March 2008, shortly before the
agency’s then chairman, Baroness Barbara Young, stepped down.

Last Friday, her successor, former Labour MP Lord Smith, was given a hostile reception when he toured the flood-affected area.

As
he tried to address the TV cameras at Stoke St Gregory, a village on
the shores of what has become a vast inland sea, one heckler told him he
was ‘toast’.

On the ground – what is left of it – the reasons for the bitterness were readily visible.

Lord
Smith had claimed that all the pumping stations were working flat-out,
but on the Tone and Parrett, they are deserted and not functioning –
because the silt which has clogged the rivers means there is nowhere for
pumped water to flow.

The last dredging took place in 2003, and
since that time, an agency spokesman admitted, the rivers’
water-carrying capacity has declined by almost half.

Even in mid-stream, clumps of weeds and islands of willow mark the areas now clogged with mud.

Last
year, after another flood, Lord Smith stood on a bridge over the
Parrett and promised residents there would be dredging in 2013.

But all that took place before the onset of the current floods in December was the removal of a few ‘pinch points’ on the Tone.

In his own flying visit to the Levels on Friday, David Cameron described the floods and waves of storms as ‘biblical’ events.

But
the point being made by locals is that while some flooding this year
would have been inevitable, when the rivers were not clogged and the
pumping stations were working, water levels could be drastically reduced
in a day or two.

If the drainage system had still been
functioning, this could have been done in the gaps between each storm –
greatly reducing the floods’ impact.

Dramatic confirmation can be seen just a few miles away, in the northern part of the Levels.

At
the Gold Corner pumping station, three giant pumps are still lifting
the waters from the rivers Axe and Brue up seven feet into the Huntspill
Drain – an artificial watercourse about 100ft wide which runs straight
to the sea.

But unlike the southern Levels rivers, the Huntspill
is not silted up. The land for miles around is just as low-lying as the
drowned villages and fields near the Parrett, but the flooding is far
less severe.

‘The purpose of the rivers has been forgotten,’
said farmer Ray Adlem, 65. It should be to get rid of the water as
quickly and efficiently as possible.

'You can read that 2008
document and conclude that running the system down has been deliberate.
The Levels has always been an artificial landscape. 'If you don’t
maintain an artificial landscape, it reverts to nature – and that’s what
some people wanted.’

The tragedy is that even the intended beneficiaries of the agency policy have suffered.

‘Any
time you went for a walk in the Levels, you’d hear plopping – the sound
of the water voles diving into the rivers,’ said farmer Edwin
White. ‘I haven’t seen a vole for ten years. They’ve all been drowned.’

An
audit by the Office of the Inspector General found that the State
Department's $75 million tab for climate change programs included
$600,000 that couldn't be accounted for. That may be seen as nothing
more than a rounding error, but it was also a sign of burning cash and
fudging data. The OIG pointed out the recipients in question “did not
fully … ensure that the data used in reporting programmatic results were
complete, accurate, consistent, and supportable.”

Buttressing
this revelation about “fudging” the data, at a time when earlier climate
models estimated we had been significantly warmer, the amount of ice
and snow cover burying most of the nation signifies otherwise. Satellite
reporting this week showed the Great Lakes had their greatest ice cover
in two decades, with Lake Superior and Lake Erie being almost totally
frozen.

Yet there are some in Congress who continue to use
incomplete, inaccurate, inconsistent and unsupportable data to plod on
with their tired tales of man-made climate change. After all, there's a
lot of government money to be redistributed and regulations to be handed
down from on high. The Safe Climate Caucus (yes, that's a real thing),
chaired by retiring Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), can't get the time of day
in a GOP-controlled House, so the Caucus is enlisting the help of an all
too willing Leftmedia. Regardless of the evidence mounting against
man-made climate change, Waxman believes the American people will “wake
up” and ask “how can you deny this?”

But the chances are greater
that a new skepticism of science could arise, argues Australian climate
scientist Garth Paltridge. He writes that “the average man in the street
… is beginning to suspect that it is politics rather than science which
is driving the issue,” fretting that this may put an end to the belief
in the honesty of science for years to come. Having to dig out from
another foot of snow may also be a sign of this challenge to
conventional wisdom.

Cruz called for an "American
energy renaissance" as the best way to restore the growth that people
want but politicians won't even discuss.

"What an incredible
opportunity we have right now," Cruz said. "The only thing that can stop
this great energy renaissance is the government getting in the way."

He
pointed to North Dakota, a fracking hub, where the average hourly wage
in the oil and gas industry is $45.90 an hour and the unemployment rate
is 2.6 percent.

Cruz said the same thing is happening in Texas,
where increased oil revenue is turning around poorer school districts
and allowing high school graduates to earn $80,000 driving trucks.

Cruz
said the energy revolution "didn't come from the U.S. Department of
Energy" or any other government agency: "It came from entrepreneurs
putting capital at risk and meeting a need," he said, in states where
regulation didn't strangle experimentation.

"In coming weeks, I
will be introducing a bill, the American Energy Renaissance Act, that is
designed to do two significant things: number one, to prevent the
federal government from stopping the energy renaissance that is
blossoming across the country; and number two, to expand the lands, the
resources that are available for the private sector to develop so that
we can answer what the American people are asking for, which is jobs and
economic growth.

"This opportunity is right in front of us if the federal government will simply listen to the American people."

Cruz said his bill will:

-- prevent federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing;-- improve domestic refining capacity;-- approve the Keystone pipeline and remove the barriers for approving additional pipelines:-- stop EPA overreach and the war on coal;-- require Congress and the president to sign off on EPA regulations that kill jobs;-- broaden energy development on federal lands;-- expand offshore exploration and development;-- expand U.S. energy exports.

"Preventing
Washington from stopping the American energy renaissance has enormous
benefits, will produce millions of high-paying jobs across this country,
and also will generate significant additional revenues to Washington --
and the final element in this bill is that the additional revenues
coming in will be dedicated in a trust fund to paying down our crushing
national debt," Cruz said.

In his speech to the Heritage Action
for America Conservative Policy Summit, Cruz said he's spent 13 months
in Washington, but the Senate in that time has not addressed economic
growth at all.

"We spent six weeks talking about guns and the
president's agenda to restrict the Second Amendment rights of
law-abiding citizens and virtually no time talking about fundamental tax
reform, about regulatory reform, about reducing the barriers coming
from Washington that are making it harder and harder for people who are
struggling to achieve the American dream."

Cruz has been
mentioned as a possible presidential candidate for 2016, and if he does
plan to run, it appears he's settled on energy as his campaign theme.

The
natural gas industry has grown exponentially over the last several
years and continues to make great strides in the United States. Natural
gas is a natural resource that has the potential to safely and cleanly
fuel the next generation of American innovation and economic expansion
with enough quantity in the United States alone to last for hundreds of
years.

This infographic from the Unconventional Oil & Gas
Center highlights the growth of the natural gas sector of the last
several years as well as potential for greatly expanded production in
the future:

SHUT UP AND SKI: 105 Olympians conned into calling for climate treaty… good news is 2,795 Olympians NOT conned

Snow
cover is largely a matter of precipitation, not temperature. The
dupes below apparently do not realize that the earth's temperature has
been stable for 17 years

Today, US Ski Team member, 2014
Olympian Andrew Newell, 105 Olympians and Protect Our Winters released a
statement calling on world leaders to take action on climate change and
to prepare a commitment to a global agreement prior to the UN Framework
Convention in Paris in 2015.

“Recognize climate change by
reducing emissions, embracing clean energy and preparing a commitment to
a global agreement at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in
Paris 2015.”

The letter has been signed by 105 Olympians from
countries that include: The United States, Switzerland, Norway, Estonia,
Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Italy and Sweden. In addition to
Newell, some of the 105 athletes include: US snowboarders Danny Davis
and Arielle Gold, Switzerland’s Bettina Gruber, Norway’s Astrid Jacobsen
and Italian ski jumper Elena Runggaldier.

This year alone,
nearly half of the FIS cross country World Cup international
competitions have taken place on artificial snow. Even last year in
Sochi, several pre-Olympic skiing and snowboarding events had to be
canceled because of poor conditions, something that has been a
consistent problem both in Central Europe and Scandinavia.

Snow
conditions are becoming much more inconsistent, weather patterns more
erratic, and what was once a topic for discussion is now reality and
fact. Our climate is changing and we are losing our winters.

Given
this, and after having seen climate change affecting his local training
grounds in Vermont, Newell decided that the Olympics would be a good
opportunity to galvanize the global community of winter Olympians, raise
the level of awareness at the policy level and take action on a global
stage.

The athletes are calling on world leaders to come
together at the UN Framework Convention in Paris in 2015 to finally take
bold and immediate measures to tackle climate change.

“We know
that as the snowpack declines, the sobering economic impacts start to
impact communities everywhere”, says Chris Steinkamp, POW’s Executive
Director. “Having this quantity and caliber of Olympians make this
statement this week should be one more wake up call for world leaders.”

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

11 February, 2014

Doubts about the hiding ocean heat

The latest episode in the claim that heat is "hiding" in the ocean is here, reporting a study led by a Prof. England. Just a few preliminary notes:

The
study offers an explanation for the pesky fact (for Warmists) that
there has been a "standstill" in the earth's temperature for about 17
years. Prof. England calculates that stronger winds in the
Pacific in recent years would have pushed hot surface water to below 700
meters and that the heat is just lurking there to come up again some
time and warm us. So the heat is not absent, just hiding.

There
is much to note there. The first is that Prof. England has spent
at least a decade denying that there has been a temperature
standstill. Yet when it suits him he suddenly admits it. His
attachment to the facts is clearly very opportunistic and not at all
confidence-inspiring. Would his calculations survive scrutiny by
someone who knows all about fluid dynamics?

Secondly, he
implicates a NATURAL process in what it going on -- something
Warmists have always sedulously avoided. Why could not ALL the
processes involved be natural? And there is every reason to regard
the standstill as natural and requiring no particular explanation. It
is entirely consistent with the meandering pattern of slight temperature
changes over the last century or more.

Thirdly he speculates
that the warm water is hanging out below 700 meters, when the extreme
limit of the mixing layer is normally given as 200 meters. How did it
get down there?

And how long is that "hot" water going to stay
down there? It is very cold in the ocean deeps so normal
convective processes would ensure that the "hot" water would
rapidly become cold. As such it's unlikely to warm anything in the
future -- JR

Uncertainty! Halt in Global warming is a hot topic in science circles

The
standstill is certainly pesky for Warmists but it is in fact an
incidental flaw in their claims. The BIG flaw in their claims is
that the gentle temperature rise seen for the last century or so will
stop and suddenly take a great leap upwards instead. That is pure
prophecy based on very weak theory. Successful
scientific predictions are generalizations from known existing
processes. Warmism is just a leap in the dark which dismisses
existing knowns

First it was dismissed as imaginary, then it
was called a statistical blip. Now it’s become one of the hottest topics
among climate scientists: why has global warming stopped?

Since
the late 1980s, we’ve been told that our planet is warming up with
potentially disastrous consequences. Leading climate scientists have
declared – with increasing confidence – that the fault lies with
mankind, with our reckless use of greenhouse gas-generating fossil
fuels.

Yet not everyone has gone along with this scientific
consensus. Some have argued that the 0.8C rise over the last century is
just natural variation. Others have insisted it’s due to faulty
measurements.

But some have claimed that while global warming may have once been underway, it isn’t any more.

They
point to the graphs of average global temperatures, which show a
seemingly inexorable rise from the mid-1970s onwards, reaching a peak in
1998 followed by… stasis. For the past 15 years, the graphs show no
discernible trend.

The claim that global warming is on hold was
first made in 2006 by Prof Bob Carter, an earth scientist from James
Cook University, Australia.

At the time, the claim was deeply
controversial, and was challenged on the entirely reasonable grounds of
insufficient evidence. Yet since then the evidence for a pause in the
upwards trend has grown.

Climate scientists continued to argue it
was a statistical blip, but now even leading advocates of man-made
global warming accept that the pause is real, and demands explanation.

Last
month, the leading science journal Nature – not known for its denial of
climate change – looked at the current best guesses as to the likely
cause of the pause.

Top of the list, ironically, is the phenomenon widely blamed for the record-breaking peak global temperature in 1998: El Niño.

Known
to scientists as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (Enso), this is a
notorious family of weather patterns that breaks out every three to
eight years in the Pacific Ocean.

Its origins lie in the complex
interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean. Each year the sun’s
warmth causes a huge build-up of heat in the Pacific, plus powerful
convective air currents in the atmosphere.

By the end of the
year, some of this heat is offloaded by currents from the western coast
of South America, triggering winter rains in Australasia.

But
every so often, there’s a much larger westward surge of heat, affecting
ocean temperatures and air flow across the whole Pacific.

The
result is a powerful El Niño effect, accompanied by a change in air
pressure known as the Southern Oscillation – and worldwide climatic
upheaval.

The 1997-8 El Niño event was particularly dramatic, and
is widely blamed for everything from floods in Chile to droughts in
Indonesia. It is also thought to be the cause of that sudden spike in
global temperatures.

But almost immediately afterwards, colder
waters from deep within the Pacific moved in to the same area. This is
now seen as part of an even grander weather cycle, called the Pacific
Decadal Oscillation (PDO).

And when something as vast as the Pacific gets cooler, it’s likely to have global consequences.

This has now been confirmed by computer models based on actual temperature data from the Pacific taken over several decades.

Researchers
at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California,
have shown that the resulting PDO cooling is enough to mop up the
underlying global warming trend – making it appear to have stopped dead.

To
climate-change sceptics, this will sound like fiddling with computer
models until they give the “right” answer. So many weather cycles have
now been identified that the explanations based on them look
suspiciously like the gear-packed “epicyclic” models the Greeks used to
prop up the idea of an Earth-centred solar system.

In fairness,
climate scientists are discovering more complexity rather than merely
inventing it. Even so, what’s needed is that acid test of any credible
scientific theory: a verifiable prediction – which is what
climatologists are now seeking.

The most obvious is that, if the
PDO really is the cause of the pause in global warming, it will flip
around, causing a sharp rise in global temperatures.

That turnaround may be underway right now.

According
to reports in Nature, strong tropical winds are already driving warm
water back into the El Niño zone of the Pacific. The western part of the
ocean has now acquired a 20cm swell compared with the east – and you
don’t need a computer to tell you that can’t last forever.

As
climate scientist Dr Kevin Trenberth of the US National Centre for
Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, memorably put it in
Nature: “At some point the water will get so high that it just sloshes
back”.

And when it does, the resulting release of heat will trigger a sudden resumption of global warming.

Or, rather, it should. For, as with so much in climate science, things aren’t that simple.

There’s another influence on our climate that’s puzzling scientists – one that could throw any prediction out of whack: the sun.

Like our climate, the sun goes through cycles, marked by the rise and fall in solar activity, as measured by sunspot numbers.

These cycles last roughly 11 years, and the current one reached its peak last year.

What bothers scientists is that it wasn’t much of a peak. In fact, it was the most feeble for more than a century.

This
has led to speculation that the sun is starting to wind down to a level
of activity not seen since the late 1600s – which just happened to
coincide with a period when the Earth became much colder.

The causal link between solar activity, sunspots and global temperatures is far from fully understood.

What
is clear, however, is that it could make a mockery of climate
predictions – and with it those scientists hoping to revive the case for
action on global warming.

The
Center for American Progress (CAP) has emerged as a leading liberal
think tank. But what role do its corporate donors play in its policy
positions?

This is the first in a series of articles by The Daily
Caller News Foundation investigating this question — and TheDCNF has
found that the progressive think tank used its influence and networking
to forward corporate agendas.

CAP was founded by former Clinton
White House chief of staff John Podesta in 2003 as an alternative to the
conservative Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute,
and in its relatively short lifespan has gained much notoriety on the
Washington, D.C. policy scene.

Podesta has been able to bring on
other prominent former Democratic officials, such as Clinton
Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner and former White
House official Neera Tanden, who now serves as CAP’s president.

The
liberal think tank has been active on virtually every major policy
issue in the last decade, including energy and climate policy, as well
as pushing federal health-insurance reform through backing Obamacare.

“As
progressives, we believe America is a land of boundless opportunity,
where people can better themselves, their children, their families, and
their communities through education, hard work, and the freedom to climb
the ladder of economic mobility,” CAP’s website reads.

“We
believe an open and effective government can champion the common good
over narrow self-interest, harness the strength of our diversity, and
secure the rights and safety of its people,” the think tank’s bio
continues. “And we believe our nation must always be a beacon of hope
and strength to the rest of the world.”

Podesta recently took a
position back at the White House as an Obama administration senior
adviser. Before he left CAP, the think tank released a list of 58
corporate donors, including Google, General Electric and major insurance
companies. The move was supposed to improve the institution’s image,
but it was met with intense criticism from the left.

“Mr.
Podesta, named a senior adviser to President Obama, is not currently a
lobbyist and therefore does not have to worry about the Obama
administration’s self-imposed ban on hiring lobbyists to administration
jobs,” writes The New York Times. “But he will nonetheless arrive at the
White House after having run an organization that has taken millions of
dollars in corporate donations in recent years and has its own team of
lobbyists who have pushed an agenda that sometimes echoes the interests
of these corporate supporters.”

CAP argues, however, that only
about $2.7 million of its $42 million budget last came from corporations
or foundations run by corporations. And despite the criticisms over
supporting their donor’s corporate agenda, CAP argues it is not under
corporate influence.

“The Center for American Progress has always
been fiercely independent — our views are shaped by what we think the
best solutions are to improve the lives of all Americans,” said Neera
Tanden, CAP’s president. “Donations, be they from individuals or
corporations, do not guide or determine our work. Period. Indeed, we
have advocated numerous policies that would impinge on corporate
interests — from tax policy to government subsidies; our interests are
simply to provide ideas to solve the country’s problems.”

While
they may argue against corporate influence, a favorite talking point of
the post-Occupy left, CAP’s policy promotion and lobbying efforts have
indeed benefited at least some of its donors. As the NY Times wrote:
“The defense contractor Northrop Grumman gave money to the left-leaning
Center for American Progress … as the nonprofit group at times bemoaned
what it called the harmful impact of major reductions in Pentagon
spending.”

“Pacific Gas and Electric sent in a donation as Mr.
Podesta championed government incentives to promote solar energy and
other renewable sources that the California company buys more of than
nearly any other utility,” the Times added. “The pharmaceutical giant
Eli Lilly was also a donor because of what it said was the Center for
American Progress’s advocacy for patients’ rights — and just as the
debate heated up in Washington over potential cuts to the Medicare
program that covers Lilly’s most profitable drugs.”

Exhibit One: The Greenwashing of BMW

CAP
has billed itself as an independent voice that promotes progressive
solutions to complex policy problems. But the disclosure of their
corporate donors has called into question the extent of their
“independence”.

BMW of North America has been a member of CAP
since 2009. The auto group was having trouble promoting its “green”
image and turned to the lobbying firm run by former German Foreign
Minister and early leader of the German Green Party Joschka Fischer. As
it turned out, Fischer’s firm had a strategic partnership with the
Albright Stonebridge Group which is run by former Clinton Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright and features CAP distinguished fellow and
former Clinton Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol
Browner. The former EPA chief also served as a climate advisor to
President Obama.

BMW brought on Fischer’s firm in 2009 to develop
a “sustainable and environmentally friendlier business,” reports the
German newspaper Der Spiegel. It was likely through Fischer’s connection
to Albright Stonebridge that got them in touch with officials from CAP.

It
wasn’t long before CAP held an event in October 2009 called “Driving
the Transformation” about eco-friendly transportation which was used to
tout how BMW’s being a leader in terms in being environmentally
conscious. The event’s featured speaker was Norbert Reithofer, chairman
of the board of management and CEO for the BMW Group.

“Reithofer
emphasized that BMW is ahead of the clean car curve thanks to its 28
percent reduction in carbon emissions from 1997 to 2008,” reads a
summary of the hearing. “For Reithofer, keeping up with society’s
expectations for energy-efficient vehicles is the key to survive in the
car industry over the coming years. Clean transportation is both a moral
imperative and good for business.”

“And any good business knows
to how diversify,” the summary continued. “Reithofer said the world’s
‘transportation future will require a mix of mobility options,’
including modern combustion engines, efficient diesel, and hybrids. He
said that BMW is committed to pushing energy-efficient technology to the
next level.”

The event also featured Fischer, who said that
energy-efficient cars are one way the rest of the world can raise their
living standards without contributing to global warming. CAP, however,
did not disclose in the event’s summary that Fischer had been hired by
BMW to promote their sustainability efforts or that he was partnered
with Albright Stonebridge — a CAP donor.

This was not all CAP did
for BMW, however, as the group also wrote articles touting the car
company’s efforts to clean up its act and help make eco-friendly
vehicles. In August 2011, CAP published a piece entitled “It’s Easy
Being Green: Sustainable Motor Works.” BMW would have already been a
member of CAP for about two years by then.

The article, which
reads more like a BMW press release, talks about how BMW was focusing on
leading the auto industry in “clean energy” and protecting the
environment. CAP also mentioned how BMW’s South Carolina plant which is
listed as number three “on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
list of the 20 strongest on-site generation clean power users,”
according to CAP.

It was leaked in 2012 that BMW had been part of
CAP’s Business Alliance, which requires members to donate between
$25,000 and $100,000 annually. The Business Alliance comes with many
perks, including private meetings with CAP policy analysts and top
officials and invitations to VIP events with federal officials.

What does this mean?

CAP
used its influence and position as a progressive think tank to promote
BMW’s green credentials. The liberal think tank is influential in
environmental circles as it employs former EPA chief Browner — who also
works at Madeline Albright’s firm.

Regardless of whether or not
BMW is genuinely a leader in sustainability, CAP has greatly benefited
from its partnership with BMW — getting donations from the company since
2009. All CAP had to do was promote the company’s environmental agenda.

Another
thing this episode illustrates is the connections between Albright’s
lobbying group and CAP. Both Podesta and Albright served under President
Clinton and have since appeared at events together. Albright serves on
CAP’s Board of Directors and even employs CAP fellows.

Former EPA
chief Browner was a founding principal of the Albright Group, the
predecessor to Albright Stonebridge, as well as a founding board member
of CAP. Browner currently serves as a senior fellow at CAP and as a
senior counselor at Albright Stonebridge.

The Washington Free
Beacon reported that CAP national security fellows Richard Verma and
Brian Katulis both also work for Albright Stonebridge. Verma works as a
counselor at Albright Stonebridge, working on global trade issues.
Katulis works as a senior adviser at Albright Stonebridge dealing in
international issues.

An Albright Stonebridge spokesman said “we
regard the Center for American Progress as an important hub of policy
development and analysis in Washington, and the Albright Stonebridge
Group is proud to lend its support to CAP and contribute to its
mission.”

I
recently received an unsigned email about my Sierra Club commentary in
which I pointed out that it opposes traditional forms of energy and made
a passing reference to Obama’s lie that “climate change”, the new name
for global warming, was now "settled science.”

Global warming
was never based on real science. It was conjured up using dubious
computer models and we were supposed to believe that the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could actually predict what
the climate would be twenty, fifty, or a hundred years from now.

The
writer of the email disagreed with me. “lol you are a f**king idiot.
you don’t believe there is global warming going on? you need to let your
prejudices go and stop basing your views on what your political stance
is…do you research you f**king faggot.”

Now, not everyone who believes in global warming is as rude as this
individual and certainly not as ignorant, but his message suggests that
those who do not believe in it do so as the result of “a political
stance” when, in fact, our views are based on science.

Anyone
familiar with my writings knows that a lot of research is involved. In
my case, it dates back to the late 1980s when the global warming hoax
began to be embraced by politicians like Al Gore who made millions
selling worthless “carbon credits” while warning that “Earth has a
fever.”

A small army of scientists lined their pockets with
government grants to produce data that supported the utterly baseless
charge that carbon dioxide was causing the Earth to warm. They
castigated other scientists or people like myself as “deniers” while we
proffered to call ourselves sceptics. They were joined by most of the
media that ignored the real science. And the curriculums in our schools
were likewise corrupted with the hoax.

Then, about 17 years ago
the Earth began to cool. It had nothing to do with carbon dioxide—which
the Environmental Protection Agency deems a “pollutant” despite the fact
that all life on Earth would die without it—and everything to do with
the SUN.

A few days after the email arrived, two-thirds of the
contiguous U.S.A. was covered by snow. As this is being written, Lake
Superior is 92% frozen, setting a new record. As of February 5, the
entire Great Lakes system was, according to the Great Lakes
Environmental Research Laboratory, 77% covered with ice.

On
February 1st, NOAA and NASA held a joint press conference in which they
released data about 2013’s global surface temperature. They made
reference to a “pause” in the temperature that began in 1997. Dr. David
Whitehouse, science editor for the BBC, noted that “When asked for an
explanation for the ‘pause’ by reporters, Dr. Gavin Schmidt of NASA and
Dr. Thomas Karl of NOAA spoke of contributions from volcanoes,
pollution, a quiet Sun, and natural variability. In other words, they
don’t know.”

Both of these government agencies, along with others
like the EPA and the Department of the Interior are staffed by people
who understand that their employers are deeply committed to the global
warming hoax. One should assume that almost anything they have to say
about the “pause” is based entirely on politics, not science.

Then,
too, despite the many measuring stations from which data is extracted
to determine the Earth’s climate, there is a paucity of such stations in
COLD places like Siberia. Stations here in the U.S. are often placed in
“heat islands” otherwise known as cities. If you put enough of them
close to sources of heat, you get thermometer readings that produce,
well, heat.

People in the U.S., England, Europe and other areas
of the world who do not possess Ph.ds in meteorology, climatology,
geology, astronomy, and chemistry have begun to suspect that everything
they have been told about global warming is false. Between 1300 and 1850
the northern hemisphere went through a mini-ice age. After that it
began to warm up again. So, yes, there was global warming, but it was a
natural cycle, not something caused by human beings.

Nature doesn’t care what we do. It is far more powerful than most of us can comprehend.

This
brings us back to the Sun which determines, depending on where you are
on planet Earth, how warm or cold you feel. The Sun, too, goes through
cycles, generally about eleven years long. When it is generating a lot
of heat, its surface is filled with sunspots, magnetic storms.

When
there are few sunspots, solar radiation diminishes and we get cold.
Scientists who study the Sun believe it may encounter another “Maunder
minimum”, named after astronomer Edward Maunder, in which the last
“Little Ice Age”, between 1645 and 1715, occurred. The Thames in England
froze over as did the canals of Holland froze solid.

There is no
global warming and scientists like Henrik Svensmark, the director of
the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space
Institute, believes that “World temperatures may end up a lot cooler
than now for 50 years or more.” I agree.

If
I told you that you should hate coal, oil and natural gas, you might
think I was crazy and you would be right. Everything we do involves
these three energy reserves and the U.S. has so much of them that we
could be energy independent of the rest of the world while, at the same
time, exporting them.

When you think about energy reserves, think
about the hundreds of thousands of jobs they represent. Then think
about the huge revenue in leases and taxes they represent to the
government that needs to reduce its debt. Ultimately, though, try to
imagine a nation that does not utilize petroleum in thousands of ways or
fails to tap its enormous coal and natural gas reserves to generate the
electricity upon which that everything depends.

I recently
received an email from the Sierra Club praising the President’s State of
the Union speech in which he claimed that climate change — by which
they mean global warming — is real and that the science is “settled.”
No, the science entirely refutes it — except if one means that the
climate has always been a state of change. The most recent climate
change is 17 years of cooling that has gifted us with record-breaking
cold as far south as Florida.

What Sierra Club focused on was
Obama’s call for “new sources of energy” other than the traditional
ones. He was referring to solar and wind energy. A recent news article
on CNSNews noted that “Solar power, which President Barack Obama
promoted…accounted for 0.2 percent of the U.S. electricity supply in the
first nine months of 2013, according to data published by the U.S.
government’s Energy Information Administration.”

According to the
EIA, “the United States is producing less electricity now than it did
when Obama took office…From 2008 to 2012, U.S. electricity production
declined by 1.7 percent.”

Some might take this as a good thing,
but “electricity has gotten more expensive since 2008 — with the
electricity price index at an all-time high.” So we are paying more
while getting less.

The Sierra Club, however, criticized Obama
saying “As long as his administration keeps throwing lifelines to old
sources of energy like oil and gas, we won’t be able to lead the world
on clean energy solutions like wind and solar.” They called for an “end
to oil and gas fracking on public lands.” What they are not saying is
that the Obama Administration has virtually put an end to any
exploration and extraction of energy sources on public lands. And you
can forget about the massive reserves estimated to exist off-shore of
our coasts.

In early January, Mark D. Green, the editor of Energy
Tomorrow, a project of the American Petroleum Institute, examined the
reality of our vast energy sources. Keep in mind that every product we
purchase is dependent in some way on oil. “Every day 143 U.S. refineries
convert an average of 15 million barrels of crude oil” that provide
power for our vast transportation needs and thousands of other uses. Oil
is the basis for the creation of plastic. Try to imagine living without
anything that does not utilize plastic in some fashion.

As for
natural gas, experts predict that lower prices as more is discovered via
fracking, will increase industrial output 2.8 percent by 2015 and 3.9
percent by 2025. Policies that would allow the export of U.S. liquefied
natural gas would generate between $15.6 billion and $73.6 billion to
the Gross Domestic Product and help reduce our deficits and debt.

The
Sierra Club doesn’t want to see the U.S. benefit from coal, oil, and
natural gas. It wants to see the landmass filled with solar farms and
thousands of wind turbines that would not produce enough electricity to
meet the needs of nation, let alone a major city. Because they are
unpredictable, all require the backup of traditional plants.

Nor
does the Sierra Club make any mention of the Obama Administration’s war
on coal that has forced 153 plants to shut down. It’s Environmental
Protection Agency has proposed regulations that would require new plants
to employ carbon capture and sequestration technology that is not
commercially available! Nor is there any reason to capture carbon
dioxide, the gas that is the “food” that every single piece of
vegetation requires; a gas that plays virtually no role at all in the
Earth’s climate.

As this is being written, the State Department
just released a report that would clear the way for the construction of
the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada after a 5-year delay by the Obama
Administration. Pipelines are the safest way to transport oil and
natural gas. If the U.S. cannot gain access to the oil, it will go to
China and other nations.

The prospect of the pipeline was
rejected by the Sierra Club. Friends of the Earth announced that it
would join with the Rainforest Action Network, the Sierra Club, and
other radical Green groups to hold vigils around the nation Monday to
protest its possible approval and construction.

The Sierra Club
is not only lying to its members, it is lying to all of us when it says:
“Getting all of the energy we need without using fossil fuels is no
longer a question of whether we can—but whether we will.” We can’t, we
shouldn’t, and we won’t…but we must wait until Obama is no longer in
office and, as early as the 2014 midterm elections, we must rid our
nation of his supporters in Congress.

Then we will watch our nation’s economy expand with more jobs and more revenue.

Help consumers, security, environment by eliminating prohibition on exporting US oil and gas

Paul Driessen

US
oil and gas production was already declining, when the 1973 Arab oil
embargo sent oil and gasoline prices skyrocketing and created block-long
lines at gas stations. Increased domestic production could have eased
the supply and price crunch, but the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill had
resulted in congressional leasing and drilling moratoriums on federal
offshore and onshore lands.

Though it voted 50-49 to build the
Alaska pipeline, Congress refused to allow more drilling. Instead, it
legislated a 55-mph speed limit, mileage standards for vehicles and a
ban on exporting domestically produced crude oil. The speed limit was
eventually lifted, but drilling bans expanded, the mileage rules
tightened, the export ban remained, and the United States increasingly
imported more oil at higher prices.

However, quietly and under
the federal and environmentalist radar, America’s oil industry improved
and expanded its horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (aka,
fracking) technologies – on state and private lands, where DC regulators
and pressure groups had little sway. The unprecedented boom that
followed sent US oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids (propane)
production sharply upward for the first time in decades. America’s oil
output rose 30% just between 2011 and 2013, to 7.4 million barrels per
day. The Green mantra that we were depleting petroleum supplies was
smashed on the fractured rocks of reality.

Suddenly, the United
States was importing less oil than at any time since 1995; millions of
oil patch and related jobs were created; frack state royalty and tax
revenues skyrocketed; natural gas prices plummeted; and the cheaper
fuels and feed stocks fostered a US petrochemical and manufacturing
renaissance. The fracking revolution also enabled companies to export
more gasoline, kerosene, lubricants, solvents, asphalt and other
finished products (since the government never banned refined product
exports). Those exports have greatly improved the nation’s balance of
trade and gross domestic product.

Now many American producers
want the misguided export ban sent to history’s dust bin, so that they
can ship crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) to foreign ports.
Numerous other companies support their call for change. Asia needs the
energy, they note, to fuel its growing economy and support its
inadequate petroleum production infrastructure. Europe needs it because
too much of its natural gas comes from Russia, which charges high prices
and sometimes engages in energy blackmail, and because EU fracking bans
and global warming/renewable energy policies have sent business and
family energy prices into the stratosphere and killed millions of jobs.
The United States as a whole would also benefit.

Congress should
terminate the ban. (Or President Obama could void it with yet another
unconstitutional executive diktat, to counter his job-killing mandates.)
Proffered reasons for perpetuating the prohibition reflect a poor grasp
of energy markets, misguided self interests and simple hypocrisy.

US
oil production is expected to increase by some 780,000 barrels per day
in 2014, rising to 9.6 million per day by 2019. The nation’s refining
capacity is at record levels, for light, heavy, sweet and sour crude.
Exports would provide and important outlet for some of this crude,
encouraging further exploration, protecting jobs, further revitalizing
our economy, and ensuring continued royalty and tax revenues.

Opening
more publicly owned lands to leasing, drilling and fracking would
magnify these benefits many times over. These resources belong to all
Americans, not only to those who oppose energy development or want to
use anti-hydrocarbon policies to undermine economic growth and job
creation. Expanded fracking operations on all these lands would further
expand supplies, by making otherwise marginal plays more economic to
produce, reinvigorating old oil and gas fields, prolonging oil field
life, and ensuring greater resource conservation, by leaving far fewer
valuable resources behind in rock formations.

Concerns that
ending the ban would hurt consumers are misplaced. Indeed, for reasons
just given, the opposite would happen. Expanding domestic supplies will
keep OPEC at bay, stabilize global supplies and prices, and make the
United States less reliant on imports and less vulnerable to supply
disruptions.

What’s truly ironic and hypocritical here is that
this sudden concern about consumer prices comes from members of Congress
and self-styled environmental and consumer groups who have led the wars
on leasing, drilling, fracking and hydrocarbons – while supporting
expensive, land-intensive, water-hungry ethanol and biofuel programs.
All these policies hurt consumers, by driving up energy prices. And who
can forget President Obama’s pledge that electricity prices will
“necessarily skyrocket” under his policies, or former Energy Secretary
Steven Chu’s wish that gasoline cost $8-10 per gallon, as it does in
Europe.

Companies like Dow Chemical and Delta Airlines would thus
be better advised to support expanded petroleum exploration and
production (for which their voices have rarely been above a whisper),
than to continue campaigning for an extended oil and gas export ban.

Senate
Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman (!) Ron Wyden (D-OR)
also displayed woeful ignorance about energy matters when he recently
expressed concern about proposed LNG exports worsening propane shortages
that have left many families shivering this winter. Propane is
naturally occurring natural gas liquids; it has nothing to do with
exports. LNG is liquefied (compressed and super-cooled) natural gas.
Moreover, the propane shortage is due to pipeline maintenance and repair
problems in late 2013, coupled with unusual demand for propane last
fall to dry corn for ethanol production.

(Mr. Wyden’s remark
brings to mind House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s famous comment: “I
believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels.”
Memo to Ms. Pelosi: Natural gas is a fossil fuel. And these are the
people who are dictating and running our energy and economic policies!)

Furthermore,
these pseudo-converts to consumer protection are claiming concern that
the current $9 per barrel difference between US and global oil prices
could shrink if some oil is exported. They say Barclays Bank predicts
that eliminating the export ban could add $10 billion a year to gasoline
costs. However, US gasoline expenditures totaled $335 billion in 2012.
So this potential increase works out to just 3% of an average
household’s $2912 gasoline expenses. That’s $87 a year, $1.67 a week –
half the price of one Starbucks Latte Grande. The consumer impact of
America’s massive land lockups is much higher.

Even worse, increasingly tougher automobile mileage standards result in countless injuries and deaths.

One
more ironic and hypocritical aspect of all this is that ban proponents
want US oil and gas to remain in the USA, rather than letting some of it
support our European allies. Let Europe produce its own oil and gas, or
get it from the OPEC and Russian extortionists, they say. And yet these
same “ethicists” have long demanded that the United States keep its own
vast petroleum supplies locked up, while we deplete other countries’
assets and put their ecological treasures at risk from
production-related accidents.

President Obama himself has said
the Saudis should send us more oil, when global supplies tighten –
rather than using his pen and phone to tell his energy overseers to
produce more here at home. The US has also criticized China for
restricting exports of rare earth metals – and selling only electronic,
solar panel and wind turbine components made with rare earths – while we
block US rare earth mining.

Manmade climate change alarmists
should also remember that natural gas exports will reduce coal use
overseas, which will in turn reduce those dastardly emissions of
plant-fertilizing, life-giving carbon dioxide. (Not surprisingly,
350.org chief Bill McKibben claims that aggregate life-cycle CO2
emissions from gas production and use will “almost certainly” be worse
than coal. This is utter nonsense. It’s also worth noting that
life-cycle energy use, CO2 emissions and pollution associated with
electric car rare earth metals, production, charging and use are almost
certainly worse than coal or natural gas.)

The bottom line is
simple. Exporting US oil and natural gas will benefit American workers,
families, consumers, balance of trade and government revenues. We must
not let provincial views, anti-hydrocarbon ideologies or misinformed
policy positions perpetuate this antiquated ban.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

According to
Couce et al. (2013), "there is concern that the growing frequency and
severity of mass bleaching episodes may lead to species composition
shifts and functional collapse in coral reefs in the near future." On
the other hand, they also note global warming "has the potential to
improve currently marginal environmental conditions and extend the range
of tropical coral reefs into higher latitudes," as is "demonstrated in
the fossil record in response to warmer geological periods (e.g., Lighty
et al., 1978; Veron, 1992; Precht and Aronson, 2004; Greenstein and
Pandolfi, 2008; Woodroffe et al., 2010; Kiessling et al., 2012)."

But what if ocean acidification occurs concurrently?

To
investigate this potential situation, Couce et al. employed "a suite of
statistical models based on the environmental factors thought to be
limiting to the present equilibrium distribution of shallow-water coral
reefs, perturbing them with Earth System Model projected future sea
surface temperatures and aragonite saturation changes (the simulations
used in Turley et al., 2010)," while considering "a range of potential
future CO2 emissions scenarios," but focusing on "the consequences of
the 'A2' scenario (characterized by regionally oriented economic
development and high population growth, expecting ca. 850 ppm CO2 by
2100)."

After all was said and done, the three UK researchers
found, "contrary to expectations, the combined impact of ocean surface
temperature rise and acidification leads to little, if any, degradation
in future habitat suitability across much of the Atlantic and areas
currently considered 'marginal' for tropical corals, such as the eastern
Equatorial Pacific." And they note, in this regard, that "these results
are consistent with fossil evidence of range expansions during past
warm periods."

In terms of the nitty-gritty here-and-now, Couce
et al. conclude by stating that their results "present important
implications for future coral reef management, as they suggest that more
emphasis should be placed on conservation efforts on marginal reefs as
they are not necessarily a 'lost cause'."

When
public figures make a far-reaching policy proclamation, shouldn't they
clearly affirm they did their due diligence on the matter?

When
a prominent person, group or corporation exploits a situation to
promote an immediate singular solution to a controversial problem they
deem to be settled while having no personal expertise on the topic and
in the face of plausible fact-based criticisms of the basic problem,
it’s a natural reaction to ask if they fully examined all aspects of it
before adopting their final position. On the topic of global warming,
readers here are free to borrow seven questions I repeatedly pose
regarding due diligence. Perhaps they’ll also encounter the same
deer-in-the-headlights reactions I’ve seen.

One can envision a
cartoon caricature of the actual screencapture below, where an asterisk
after the statement “The time for action to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions is now” might lead to fine print saying “comments supporting
our view are welcome, dissenting ones will not be seen by the public”

In
a recent public comment section of a blog at the Hewlett Foundation, I
questioned the blog writer’s settled global warming science premise and
subtly tried to induce some introspective thought about alleged funding
influences on either side of the issue. When the blog writer completely
sidestepped my questions, this was yet another perfect opportunity to
pose the following seven questions I’ve been asking since 2009. Readers
here are more than welcome to use them – I’ve highlighted the specific
words in green that would need to be changed to suit whatever person,
group or company readers wish to send these to.

* What is the
Hewlett Foundation’s official position regarding “Climate Change
Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the NONgovernmental International Panel
on Climate Change (NIPCC)”, the related 2011 Interim Report, and CCR 2
Report? These reports, (seen here:
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/) are a detailed, authoritative
rebuttal of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
findings, which the Obama Administration and the EPA rely on for their
regulatory proposals.

* What is the Hewlett Foundation’s official
position regarding allegations that the IPCC reports fall short of EPA
guidelines requiring highly influential scientific assessments to meet a
variety of standards for transparency, data availability and due
diligence?

* Has the Hewlett Foundation done its own due
diligence assessments of IPCC reports to assure readers of its
statements that information conveyed by it on the issue of global
warming is above reproach? If those assessments have been done for the
Hewlett Foundation, can it provide specific references in IPCC reports
where theories of natural causes for the current global warming have
been disproved, or more simply, show that the IPCC had any requirement
to also evaluate potential natural causes?

* If the Hewlett
Foundation takes the position there is a scientific consensus in favor
of the idea of human-caused global warming, is it prepared to show how
“consensus” is the new operating standard of scientific inquiry across
all fields of study?

* If the Hewlett Foundation’s position is
indeed that global warming skeptic scientists operate under guidance
from industries opposing CO2 regulation, is it prepared to provide
specific proof of improper payments to those scientists, and specific
proof of faults in the scientists’ resulting reports that are obvious
indications of industry-guided science errors?

* Is the Hewlett
Foundation able to demonstrate how energy sustainability and stewardship
of the environment are synonymous with CO2 regulation, considering the
questions above?

There’s really no right or wrong answers to
those. But rather than answer them, the Hewlett Foundation’s blog
moderator partly addressed the funding point in my first comment while
avoiding my questions about his organization’s official position on
skeptic climate science points. He subsequently directed me to a new
blog by no less than the president of the Hewlett Foundation, Larry
Kramer, who still skipped my questions.

I’ll spell out Kramer’s
original blog link url here
http://www.hewlett.org/blog/posts/no-room-debate so readers are aware of
what his blog’s prior title was, and so that all may see how the final
url changes. Apparently “No Room for Debate” was too assertive, so it
was changed mere hours after it appeared to “There Comes a Point”. The
prior title is seen in my screencapture of the rebuttal I submitted. My
rebuttal is no longer “under moderation”, though, it has been deleted.

The
first time I used those seven questions was in July 2009, after seeing a
news item about Deutsche Bank’s declaration that we need to do
something about global warming. Deutsche Bank never replied. Various
Nike personnel gave me the email run-around about my inquiry being sent
to the top administrators, when I asked how they justified bailing out
of the US Chamber of Commerce over the global warming issue. My
questions are most often ignored, such as when the “Grannies for a
Livable Future” did so last year.

The disturbing part of this
entire exercise is the irony in which these people are so keen to inform
the public about the perils of global warming, yet they are unwilling
or unable to use a great public opportunity to tell us why they know
skeptic climate scientists are unworthy of consideration.

But there was one instance where a corporate spokesperson felt no restraint.

We
are familiar with Dr. S. Fred Singer, Dr. Frederick Seitz and also the
Non-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). Dr.
Singer’s first critique of the UN IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report was
titled Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate, and it listed 24
contributors from 14 countries and included a foreword by Dr.
Seitz. Climate scientists from NASA, Stanford University and
Princeton who were contacted by ABC News dismissed the NIPCC report as
“fabricated nonsense.”

The “fabricated nonsense” bit arises
solely out of a March 23, 2008 ABC News piece titled “Global Warming
Denier: Fraud or ‘Realist’?”, in which ABC’s viewers were never told who
the NASA, Stanford and Princeton scientist accusers were, or how those
scientists proved the NIPCC Report was either a fabrication or simply
nonsensical. As seen in the balance of PNM’s response, they feel
consensus validates the conclusion put out by IPCC scientists.

Lovely.
The largest electricity provider in the state of New Mexico, PNM
Resources, apparently has a global warming policy that was
significantly influenced by a single line out of a news report, and is
otherwise shored up by little more than a ‘show of hands’. Their email
to me had no restriction about reproducing it, and they went dead silent
on my subsequent follow-up email questions.

By all means, feel
free to use my set of questions to find out how many more public
figures, politicians, groups or corporations are able to defend their
‘pro-global warming’ positions. Wouldn’t it be even more interesting if a
professional pollster posed those questions in order to see how many
end up looking like a deer caught in the headlights.

Freelance
writer Marlene Cimons, an adjunct professor of journalism at the
University of Maryland, wrote an editorial published by LiveScience and
Yahoo News claiming increases in the frequency and severity of extreme
weather events damage mental health. Cimons presented this assertion as a
means to claiming global warming is harming mental health.

Assuming
for the sake of argument that extreme weather events cause mental
health-damaging stress, the facts show global warming is improving
rather than harming mental health.

While spending the majority of
her editorial asserting a link between extreme weather events and
mental health, Cimons addressed global warming science in less than a
full paragraph. Citing an anecdotal story of somebody claiming to have
stress-related headaches and depression after Sandy battered the New
Jersey coastline in November 2012, Cimons made an unsupported leap in
logic that global warming caused the storm and therefore caused the
headaches and depression.

Global warming realists know factual
evidence shows extreme weather events have become less frequent and
extreme as our planet gradually warms from the Little Ice Age conditions
that prevailed through the end of the nineteenth century. Cimons’
editorial is a timely reminder that global warming activists should not
go unchallenged when they falsely assert the relatively few extreme
weather events that still occur must be caused by global warming.

European Court of Justice condemns EPAW; Armed groups have more rights than wind farm victims

On
21 January 2014, the Luxembourg-based General Court of the European
Court of Justice ruled that the European Platform Against Windfarms
(EPAW) does not have “legal personality,” and therefore had no right to
initiate a recourse in its chambers against the European Commission.
epawEPAW represents 649 associations of windfarm victims across Europe.
It had brought a case against the European Union, denouncing Brussels’
new renewable energy targets for not respecting the rights of citizens
to participate in environmental decision-making under the provisions of
Aarhus Convention legislation.

Yet in a judgment dated 18 January
2007, the Court of Justice had declared admissible an appeal by the
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an organization with no legal
personality, based outside the EU, and with a history of armed
rebellion. The Court had then given value to the argument that "it is a
question of avoiding excessive formalism” (case C-229/05 P).

Initially,
the General Court had admitted EPAW’s recourse, and had processed it.
Indeed, unincorporated bodies based in Ireland such as EPAW do not have
to be constituted as registered associations to have certain rights
regarding environmental matters. The Irish Supreme Court even confirmed
on 27 November 2013 that in similar circumstances unincorporated bodies
could bring matters into proceedings at the Irish High Court. These
bodies argue that, lacking both time and resources, many groups of
citizens cannot spend precious energy and money drafting legal statutes,
organizing annual assemblies, writing minutes, doing secretarial work
and filing reports to government(s).

Other EU institutions, like
the European Ombudsman and the European Commission, did not refuse to
process complaints submitted to them by EPAW. Neither have the United
Nations in Geneva, which are watching over the rights of the people in
environmental matters under the Aarhus Convention. Furthermore, the
Platform is registered (Nº 66046067830-67) on the EU’s Transparency
Register, which provides information on organizations seeking to have a
say in EU decision making.

On 23 January, EPAW received from the
General Court the defense memorandum of the European Commission, which
had been lodged nearly 4 months earlier. Attached to that same email of
23 January was the ruling of the Court, not permitting EPAW to challenge
the arguments of the Commission, dismissing the case and ordering EPAW
to pay the costs incurred by Brussels in defending itself.

“The
Aarhus Convention stipulates that access to justice must be ‘free of
charge or inexpensive’,” complains Mark Duchamp, of EPAW. “As a
platform, we have no money, and our lawyer is working pro bono. What the
Court has done is to castigate windfarm victims, whereas it had helped
the armed group PKK to get its funds unfrozen by EU banks.

“In
the circumstances, we can’t even appeal the decision, risking more
punishment we can’t afford. And if we can’t pay the defense costs of the
European Commission, what then? Will Brussels name a figure, and force
windfarm victims to sell their homes to pay for it? This is outrageous,
especially when considering that the Commission has been violating its
own laws on people’s participation in decision-making, as per the
findings of the United Nations’ Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee.
But Brussels is proceeding with its non-compliant 2020 renewable energy
program in defiance of its own legislation and of the UN. It is now even
seeking to extend this illegal program to 2030 in a manner which is,
again, non-compliant with required public participation procedures. This
is precisely what EPAW was, rightly, trying to stop.”

Duchamp is
wondering about the independence of the Court of Justice from the
executive arm of the EU: “the Court had admitted our recourse. They had
processed it, notifying the other party (the European Commission). But
all of a sudden, eight months later, they backtracked without letting us
present new evidence, such as the Irish Supreme Court ruling, or even
defend ourselves against the misleading allegations of the Commission.
They showed a surprising hostility by condemning us to pay costs,
whereas they had themselves decided to accept our recourse. If indeed
our action was not admissible, why did they process it, notifying the
defendant? And if it was their mistake, why condemn us to pay the
European Commission’s lawyers? – Again this is outrageous, and we have a
good reason to be indignant.

“Now the Commission is no longer
under the threat of seeing its new renewable energy targets challenged
by the General Court. Brussels was handed a get-out-of-jail-free card,
the Aarhus Convention is dead in the water, and so may be the rule of
law in the EU.”

The Labour quango chief blamed by flood victims for wrecking homes and livelihoods has effectively been told to quit by No?10.

Communities
Secretary Eric Pickles, now put in charge of handling the flooding
crisis by David Cameron, said Environment Agency chairman Chris Smith
should make a public apology for its mistakes.

And asked whether
Lord Smith, a former Cabinet Minister, should resign, Mr Pickles said
bluntly: ‘He has to make his own decision.’

He used brutal
sarcasm to pile on the pressure, adding: ‘I don’t see myself becoming
the advocate of the “Save Chris Smith” campaign or printing “Save The
Environment Agency One” T-shirts.’

He accused Lord Smith of
playing ‘divide and rule’ by ‘trying to set town against country’,
letting the EA become ‘riddled with politically correct’ eco-fanatics
opposed to dredging, presiding as the organisation ‘lost its way’ and
spending 20 times more money on its bloated bureaucracy than on keeping
rivers clear.

Mr Pickles’s comments came 24 hours after Lord
Smith visited the flood-hit Somerset Levels and refused to resign. The
Minister showed little sympathy over the mauling local residents gave
Lord Smith, who lives in a £1?million London apartment with beloved
Tibetan terrier Jinny.

‘It’s always good to get feedback from
your customers,’ Mr Pickles observed drily. ‘At least he’ll never have
to hire a focus group to know what people are thinking.’

Ignoring
Labour claims that the Government is ‘scapegoating’ Lord Smith, Mr
Pickles urged him to give in to demands to say sorry for the EA’s
alleged failings.

‘It’s not a sign of weakness. A bit of reaching
out and humanity and humility is good for everybody, whether a
distinguished quangocrat or a member of the Cabinet.’

Mr Pickles
added: ‘Being flooded is like a burglary: Afterwards, the effect
continues. It’s not just the drying out or loss of precious possessions
and memories. Every time it rains people wonder, “Is it going to happen
again?”?’

Mr Pickles was asked by Mr Cameron to take charge of
the crisis last week after Environment Secretary Owen Paterson had to
have urgent treatment for a detached retina.

Mr Paterson, who is
married to an aristocrat’s daughter, had been criticised for visiting
the Somerset Levels in town shoes, not Wellington boots. He was accused
of seeming ‘shrill and aloof’ in interviews and in dealing with flood
victims.

By contrast, plain-talking Yorkshireman Mr Pickles was
born into a Labour-supporting family and has the common touch you would
expect of an Essex MP.

Mr Pickles said the EA had blundered by
stopping dredging. ‘The Somerset Levels were man-made and dredging was a
fundamental part of keeping it going, just as it is with any land below
sea level right across the world. You need to continuously dredge.

‘It
worries me that in a politically correct attempt to be more
environmentally sound than the next person, something as basic as this
has been forgotten.’

No one has ever accused Eric Pickles of
being a slave to political – or any other – fashion. By contrast,
culture vulture Lord Smith was a New Labour Minister who cut his teeth
in trendy, Labour-run Islington, the urban fount of political
correctness.

‘Chris Smith tried to play divide and rule by
setting town against country [when he said that the EA had to protect
one or the other]. That is a false choice.

‘The people on the
ground have done a fantastic job, but the agency has lost its way and
become riddled with political correctness.

It is not the first
time he has clashed with the EA’s eco warriors. ‘Don’t even start me on
my arguments with them about fortnightly rubbish collections,’ he
roared.

The flood has submerged the homes and lives of thousands
of people. And if Mr Pickles has his way, the EA and Lord Smith will
join the casualty list.

He plans to force town halls to spell out
on council tax bills how much money each household is contributing to
the EA’s eye-watering £1.2?billion annual budget. He said: ‘The EA hiked
up the council tax by around 20 per cent in the West Country last year
with little to show for it. ‘

He added: ‘It must not be invisible
any more. They need a clear leadership and to understand that people
matter. People are entitled to feel safe in their homes.

‘The EA
gets £1.2?billion a year but paid out £395?million on staff last year
and just £20?million on improving maintenance of culverts and channels
to ensure the free flow of water.’ It was the most expensive agency of
its type in Europe, costing nearly as much as in the USA.

Mr
Pickles had no truck with green activists who say people on the Somerset
Levels chose to live below sea level and should move.

‘That’s
bad news for most of the Netherlands isn’t it?’ he quipped, with
trademark deadpan humour. ‘I am certainly not in retreat. I want
people back in their homes and animals back in their farms.’

Mr Pickles said he was determined to restore train links to Cornwall after the track crumbled into the sea in Dawlish in Devon.

But
he does not rule out re-routing the track inland in the future. And he
plans a massive ‘storm audit’ of all coastal road and rail links to find
out whether other changes are needed.

‘We will look at all our strategic infrastructure to ensure it is as clear as possible from disruption from storms.’

He
is due to visit areas hit by the floods in a few days. When he does,
unlike Mr Paterson, he will definitely be wearing Wellingtons.

Are they black or green?

‘Black, of course,’ laughed Mr Pickles. Green Wellies are for the posh kids, like Messrs Paterson and Cameron.

Forgotten: Historic hot temperatures recorded with detail and care in Adelaide, Australia

What
I found most interesting about this was the skill, dedication and
length of meteorological data taken in the 1800?s. When our climate is
“the most important moral challenge” why is it there is so little
interest in our longest and oldest data?

Who knew that one of the
most meticulous and detailed temperature records in the world from the
1800?s comes from Adelaide, largely thanks to Sir Charles Todd. The West
Terrace site in Adelaide was one of the best in the world at the time,
and provides accurate historic temperatures from “Australia’s
first permanent weather bureau at Adelaide in 1856?. (Rainfall records
even appear to go as far back as 1839.) Lance Pidgeon went delving
into the National Archives and was surprised at what he found.

If we want to understand our climate the records from the 1800?s in Adelaide are surely worth attention?

The
BOM usually shows graphs like this one below starting in 1911. You
might think you are looking at the complete history of Adelaide
temperatures and that smoothed temperature is rising inexorably, but the
historic records remain unseen. While “hottest” ever records are
proclaimed in the media, few go hunting for older hotter records. Yet,
one of the hottest temperatures recorded in Australia were recorded in
1828, and raging heatwaves with temperatures over 50C occurred in the
1800s. In 1896 a monster heatwave across the nation killed hundreds, and
people were even evacuated on emergency trains.

BOM temperature records for Adelaide ignore older warmer days: BOM

The
old equipment was not identical to modern stations, but it was recorded
diligently and with expert attention, and in the same location for over
120 years. When compared side by side, the older types of screens
produced slightly more extreme temperatures than the Stevenson
screens but this does not mean that the old recordings should be
forgotten. With careful adjustment the Adelaide record could be one of
the longest in the world. Strangely, no one seems too interested. If
these old records showed Adelaide was way cooler in the 1860?s, do we
suppose an eager PhD student would not have jumped at the chance to
splice historic old and new records into a long alarming graph and a
popular thesis? The question begs…

I fear the cult of the young
means the smarts of the oldest of old-timers is automatically
discounted, yet those old codgers from the 1800?s weren’t
necessarily old at the time, and were connected to the harsh realities
of the natural world in way that soft cushy net-connected university
grads could not imagine today.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

9 February, 2012

Cartoon corner

Denying the cold

The future according to Greenies

Hawaii is getting cooler

Discussing:
Safeeq, M., Mair, A. and Fares, A. 2013. Temporal and spatial trends in
air temperature on the Island of Oahu, Hawaii. International Journal of
Climatology 33: 2816-2835.

According to Safeeq et al. (2013),
daily temperature (T) measurements of Tmin and Tmax that were collected
during 1969-2007 from twelve different stations scattered across the
island of Oahu were downloaded from a repository at the U.S. National
Climate Data Center, after which they computed the trends of each
parameter over the 39-year period of 1969-2007 and the 25-year period of
1983-2007.

Based on their analysis of such trends, the authors
report that over the longer 39-year period, island-wide minimum
temperature increased by 0.17°C/decade, while there was no detectable
trend in the corresponding maximum temperature.

And during the
more recent 25-year period, they found annual maximum temperature
actually showed a decline, while minimum temperature continued to
increase. And they thus calculated that the trend in the diurnal
temperature range (DTR) "shows a decline during the past 39 years with a
stronger decreasing trend during the recent 25 years."

Perhaps
one of the most significant implications of the researchers' findings -
which they do not mention, however - is the finding of Yang et al.
(2013), who while working in Guangzhou City (the largest metropolis in
Southern China) discovered "a linear DTR-mortality relationship, with
evidence of increasing mortality with DTR increase," where "the effect
of DTR occurred immediately and lasted for four days," such that over
that time period, a 1°C increase in DTR was associated with a 0.47%
increase in non-accidental mortality, and who also found this effect to
be most prevalent among "the elderly, females and residents with less
education."

Thus, with Oahu's decreasing DTR trend, and its
increasingly decreasing value, many of the inhabitants of Oahu should be
able to expect a modest increase in the livability of their island
home.

Day
et al. investigated the belowground root responses of a scrub-oak
ecosystem located at the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island National
Wildlife Refuge on the east coast of Florida, USA.

At this
location the soil is acidic, well-drained and nutrient-poor, and the
climate is subtropical with a wet season between late June and October
and a dry season between April and early June. In addition,
lightening-induced fire is the chief ecosystem disturbance, exhibiting a
7-15-year cycle, while other natural disturbances are periodic drought
and severe weather from tropical storms and hurricanes.

In their
particular experiment, half of the study's open-top chambers enclosing
groups of trees were exposed to eleven years of atmospheric CO2
enrichment to approximately 350 ppm above the ambient concentration.
Fine root production, turnover and biomass were measured using
mini-rhizotrons, while coarse root biomass was measured using
ground-penetrating radar, and total root biomass using soil cores.

The
twelve researchers report "total root biomass was as much as five times
greater than aboveground biomass in this system, reflecting the
importance of belowground structures as a carbon reservoir." They also
note the belowground biomass was temporally dynamic and underwent
natural cycles "affected by ecosystem disturbances in systems with
strong disturbance regimes." More specifically, they state "strong CO2
effects on fine root biomass were seen after disturbance by fire and
hurricane during periods of recovery followed by periods in which CO2
effects diminished."

In the concluding words of Day et al.,
"elevated CO2 may enhance root growth following disturbance and
potentially speed up the recovery." Indeed, it would appear even
following the massive aboveground destruction caused by both fires and
hurricanes, atmospheric CO2 enrichment is able to bring scrub-oak
ecosystems back from the brink, so to speak, to once again flourish, as
the life-giving gas stimulates root production and the acquisition of
needed-but-scarce soil nutrients.

Washington
Post columnist Eugene Robinson posted a January 28 Investor’s Business
Daily Op-Ed piece titled “Beyond Vortex Lies a Lesson for
Denialists.” His thesis was that recent cold waves bringing
subzero and single-digit temperatures too much of the nation provide an
excuse for global warming skeptics (us “denialists”) to claim that “it’s
really cold outside, so global warming must be a crock!” He emphasizes
that we skeptics “forget that it’s winter, and apparently they [we]
don’t quite grasp that even when it’s cold in one part of the world, it
can be hot in another.”

Frankly, while my fellow skeptics may
seriously doubt that any evidence of a human-caused, or even
nature-caused, climate crisis exists, I don’t know of any who disagree
with Robinson about not concluding much of anything about “climate
change” based upon conditions occurring over a few days, weeks, months,
or even years of unseasonably cold (or warm) weather over part or most
of the world. After all, “climate” is a term typically applied to cycles
lasting at least 30 years which depend a lot upon when you start
measuring.

There is certainly no dispute regarding the fact that
climate changes, and does so for many reasons. In fact the past century
has witnessed two distinct periods of warming and cooling. The first
warming occurred between 1900 and 1945. Since CO2 levels were relatively
low then compared with now, and didn’t change much, they couldn’t have
been the cause before 1950.

The second warming shift began in
1975 and rose at quite a constant rate until 1998, a strong Pacific
Ocean El Niño year…although this later warming is reported only by
surface thermometers, not satellites, and is legitimately disputed by
some. (There’s some background on this in my June 18 column.)

Incidentally,
about half of all estimated warming since 1900 occurred before the
mid-1940s despite continuously rising CO2 levels since that time. As for
continued warming (up until a recent 17-year “pause”), we have been
witnessing a pretty constant trend of temperature increases ever since
the last “Little Ice Age” (not a true Ice Age) ended in about 1850.

Robinson
cited a January 2 article in the journal Nature arguing that
human-generated carbon emissions will lead to even greater warming than
was previously anticipated. This will allegedly result from the impact
of warming on cloud cover causing average global temperatures to
possibly rise a full 7° F by the end of the century.

The study’s
lead author, Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales, told
the Guardian newspaper that this: “would likely be catastrophic rather
than simply dangerous” and “would make life difficult, if not
impossible, in much the tropics.”

Some other January articles
posted in Nature might be noted as well. For example, an unsigned
editorial in the January 16 issue titled “Cool Heads Needed,” warns that
unusual cold weather doesn’t prove or disprove the theory of that
anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming that “climate skeptics” have
“celebrated”. It also theorizes that “global warming might in fact be
contributing to the string of abnormally cold U.S. winters in recent
years,” yet also observes that “the average global temperature… has
plateaued since 1998.”

The editorial admits that: “plenty of
questions remain … Exactly how sensitive is Earth’s climate system to
increasing atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases?” It finally concludes
that “if the past is any indication, we may have to live with a fair
degree of uncertainty.”

Another Nature journal article of the
same date titled “The Case of the Missing Heat,” by Jeff Tollefson,
reviews research on why “the warming stalled” in 1998. He reports “the
pause has persisted, sparking a minor crisis of confidence in the
field.”

Tollefson then claims that: “climate skeptics have seized
on the temperature trends as evidence that global warming has ground to
a halt. Climate scientists, meanwhile, know that the heat must be
building up somewhere in the climate system, but they have struggled to
explain where it is going, if not into the atmosphere.”

Then his wrenching dilemma: “Some have begun to wonder whether there is something amiss in their [climate] models.”

Something
amiss in their models…is that truly possible? Golly, I thought only
radical “skeptics” entertained that rash possibility!

And by the
way, there are also some really smart climate scientists who believe
that the global climate warming “pause” we have been experiencing since
the time most of today’s high school students were born will not only
continue, but now introduces a much longer-term cooling cycle.

As
I discussed in my January 21 column, Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov who
heads Russia’s prestigious Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg
predicts that: “after the maximum of solar Cycle-24, from approximately
2014, we can expect the start of the next bicentennial cycle of deep
cooling with a Little Ice Age in 2055 plus or minus 11 years” (the 19th
to occur in the past 7,500 years).

Abdussamatov and others
primarily link their cooling predictions to a 100-year record low number
of sunspots. Periods of reduced sunspot activity correlate with
increased cloud-forming influences of cosmic rays. More clouds tend to
make conditions cooler, while fewer often cause warming. He points out
that Earth has experienced such occurrences five times over the last
1,000 years, and that: “A global freeze will come about regardless of
whether or not industrialized countries put a cap on their greenhouse
gas emissions. The common view of Man’s industrial activity is a
deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation
of cause and effect.”

But back to that “polar vortex” thing. As
Robinson and other members of the Four-Alarm Fire Brigade insist, with
the planet obviously in flames, those numbing temperatures over much of
the country (the ones we “skeptics/denialists” are so eager to flaunt)
must be an anomaly…a rare exception… certainly not something that can be
correlated with any natural climate change that would suggest a
possible cooling trend. Giving it a special, exotic-sounding name is a
great way to distinguish this from a common old run-of-the-mill weather
phenomenon.

Actually however, it’s really not such a new name
after all. And the warministas are right that it apparently has nothing
to do with global warming, with human fossil-burning carbon emissions,
or with flatulent cattle and kangaroos either for that matter.

Princeton
University physicist Dr. Will Happer provides a good thumbnail sketch
of the physics involved in an interview posted on Marc Morano’s Climate
Depot website. Emphasizing that polar vortices have been around forever,
he explains: “The poles have little sunshine even in summer, but
especially in winter, like now in the Arctic. So the air over the poles
rapidly gets bitterly cold because of radiation to dark space, with
negligible replenishment of heat from sunlight.”

Dr. Happer
continues: “The sinking cold air is replaced by warmer air flowing in
from the south at high altitudes. Since the Earth is rotating, the air
flowing in from the south has to start rotating faster to the west, just
like a figure skater rotates faster if she pulls in her arms. This
forms the polar vortex. The extremely cold air at the bottom of the
vortex can be carried south by meanders of the jet stream at the ends of
the vortex.”

Happer concludes that “we will have to live with polar vortices as long as the sun shines and the Earth rotates.”

My
meteorologist friend Joe Bastardi notes two fairly recent examples when
Arctic polar vortices dropped blasts of very cold air into the U.S. One
occurred during January 1977, and the other came along at the time of
President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration in January 1985…when
Chicago’s temperatures then reached a record low of 28°F below zero.

As
a matter of fact, a polar vortex back in 1777 can potentially be
credited with influencing the course of American history. That was just
before the Battle of Princeton when Cornwallis’s men marched south of
New York City in an attempt to trap George Washington’s small
Continental Army in Trenton. Fortunately for the home team, a vortex
swept across New Jersey which enabled Washington to avoid encirclement
by evacuating his troops and artillery over frozen roads. Upon reaching
Princeton, they successfully attacked the British garrison.

Can
we thank climate change, global warming, or even global cooling for
that? Well, while it did occur near the end of that last Little Ice Age,
probably not. But let’s at least finally give that polar vortex some
long overdue recognition.

Why
is it not surprising to see extensive collaboration between federal
agencies and private groups? Especially when it’s the EPA and
environmental groups doing it. Emails released earlier show this
relationship.

Emails show EPA used official events to help
environmentalist groups gather signatures for petitions on agency
rulemaking, incorporated advance copies of letters drafted by those
groups into official statements, and worked with environmentalists to
publicly pressure executives of at least one energy company.

This
is a major issue because this basically shows that the EPA worked with
these private groups in order to make these strict regulations on
carbon, which effectively killed many coal projects. But what’s funny is
that this relationship is not new.

Basically every major federal
law regarding the environment has provisions that allow private
organizations to sue the EPA if they don’t think the EPA is doing enough
to protect the air quality. But the EPA is most often sued by
environmental groups! And of course it folds to the pressure without
putting up a fight.

This type of corruption is completely out of
control. As if we didn’t already know the EPA is a complete waste of
federal funds, now we know that they are also crooked. Talk about a not
so hidden agenda!

The DOJ spent $43 million on defending the EPA
against suits brought by environmental groups in a 12 year period of
time. What a waste of tax dollars! And additionally, this certainly
makes it look like the EPA is using the activist lawsuits as a way to
increase regulations.

Whatever happened to the government being
accountable to the American people instead of special interests? And
remind me, which party is it that is the one that represents the special
interests more? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

The
media aren't paying much attention, but in recent weeks Europe has
decided to run, not walk, as fast as it can away from the economic
menace of green energy.

That's right, the same Europeans who used
to chastise us for not signing the Kyoto climate change treaty, not
passing a carbon tax and dooming the planet to catastrophic global
warming.

In Brussels last month, European leaders agreed to scrap
per-nation caps on carbon emissions. The EU countries — France,
Germany, Italy and Spain — had promised a 40% reduction in emissions by
2030 (and 80% by 2050!). Now those caps won't apply to individual
nations.

Brussels calls this new policy "flexibility." Right.
More like "never mind," and here's why: The new German economic
minister, Sigmar Gabriel, says green energy mandates have become such an
albatross around the neck of industry that they could lead to a
"deindustrialization" of Germany.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said
earlier this year that overreliance on renewable energy could cause "a
problem in terms of energy supply" — and she's always described herself
as a green politician and a champion of these programs.

But green
dreams have collided with cold economic reality. Green programs aren't
creating green jobs but green unemployment at intolerable double-digit
rates. The quip in economically exhausted Europe these days is that
before we save the planet, we have to save ourselves.

Now
European leaders are admitting quietly that they want to get into the
game of fracking and other new drilling technologies that have caused an
explosion of oil and gas production in the U.S.

According to
energy expert Daniel Yergin, if Europe wants to remain competitive,
these nations must tap the fountain of abundant and cheap shale gas and
oil. He recently wrote that European leaders now realize a major factor
behind the economic woes in euroland is that electric power costs are
"two to three times more expensive" than in the U.S.

Consider the
price of natural gas in the U.S. vs. other nations in the chart below.
U.S. prices are about three to four times lower, and in states like
Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania this is causing a renaissance in
manufacturing. German engineering and manufacturing firms are looking to
relocate to the U.S. where power costs are lower.

What's amazing
about this story is that so few American politicians get it. President
Obama talked in his State of the Union speech about doubling renewable
energy output over the coming years. Mr. President, these are exactly
the goals the Europeans are abandoning. Why chase the losers?

Why
not try a different approach to energy policy? Get rid of all taxpayer
subsidies for energy — oil, gas, wind and solar power, biofuels,
electric-battery-operated cars and others — and create a true level
playing field where every energy source competes on efficiency and cost
rather than political/corporate favoritism?

The answer is that
the green lobby knows it can't possibly compete on a level playing
field. Not with natural gas at $4 and 150 years' worth of this power
source in Appalachia's Marcellus shale basin and more out West.

The
Europeans made nearly a $100 billion wrong bet on renewable energy, and
their economies and citizens have taken a big hit. Now they've awakened
to their mistakes. The shame is Washington is still slumbering.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

7 February, 2014

SCIENTIFIC ADVISER OR COURT JESTER?

According
to an article in The Times (London) earlier this week, the government’s
chief scientific adviser, Sir Mark Walport, is about to start a lecture
tour, which ‘will put climate change back on the political agenda’.

With
the global effort to reduce CO2 emissions in tatters, with the EU doing
a volte-face on its own green energy targets, with the UK examining its
own commitment to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
and to green legislation, and with scientists scratching their heads
about the absence of warming over the past 17 years, Walport’s words
seem incautious, possibly foolish.

Environmentalists have a
tendency to do their own negative PR. Too much was invested by too many
in the notion that, by now, we would be seeing the natural world fall
apart, taking human civilisation with it. It didn’t happen.
Environmentalists’ prophecies about the climate have gone the way of
their prophecies about population, resource depletion, and toxic
chemicals.

The IPCC – the embodiment of the consensus itself –
recently reported that there is no climate change signal in extreme
weather events, except a slight tendency toward warmer days and
increased precipitation. Nature, it seems, abhors vacuous alarmists.

Worse,
environmentalists have failed to reflect on their own failures, and to
find some other way of accounting for them. Accordingly, Walport’s
opening salvo in this new climate offensive were ‘There are some people
who don’t like the policy implications of climate change and think that
the best way to duck the discussion is to deny the science’. The
government’s soothsayer points his expert finger.

Walport is
wrong. There have been countless criticisms of UK, EU, and UN climate
and energy policies, quite apart from the criticisms of mainstream
climate science, from climate sceptics. Climate sceptics have long been
critical of the UK government’s hastily-constructed attempts to save the
planet. And sceptics have observed that green-energy policies are
expensive, don’t provide adequate or reliable supply, and have created
deep distortions in the energy market – problems which are now being
felt across Europe.

Furthermore, sceptics have argued that
emission-reduction targets were never tested for feasibility, much less
for costs and benefits, and even less for their effectiveness at saving
the planet.

There is even a think-tank established precisely to
interrogate climate policy – the Global Warming Policy Foundation
(GWPF). The clue is in the name. The GWPF has published reports on EU
policy, shale gas, alarmism in policymaking, green jobs, problems with
the IPCC, the Stern Review, and many other topics. If Walport had read
just one of them, he would surely address them.

Heavy
snowfall has reportedly paralyzed the northern Iranian provinces of
Gilan and Mazandaran, knocking out gas, power and water supplies. The
Chaloos representative in Parliament reported on February 3 that 145
townships in western Mazandaran are without water and power, and access
to 10 cities has been cut off by snowfall in the region.

Citizens
have been urged to plow snow from their roofs to avoid cave-ins, as
reports indicate that the unprecedented snowfall has reached two metres
in some regions.

In Savadkouh, 40 to 50 homes have been crushed by heavy snow.

Gilan Province is under similar conditions with some people unable to get out of their homes due to the heavy snowfall.

Revolutionary Guards chief Moahmmad Ali Jafari announced that they have dispatched forces to the northern provinces to assist

No, the wind industry hasn’t given up on their expired production tax credit

For
the wind lobby, the expiration of their all-important wind production
tax credit at the start of the year is hardly a reason to abandon their
constant quest to redeem it; after all, the credit has had several other
close shaves with expiration over the years, only to have Congress
relent and tack it back on to some bill or other at the last minute.
After a brief expiration, the industry managed to procure just such a
retroactive extension in the debt-deal deliberations at the start of
2013, good for just the one year, and with the added provision that
energy companies need only to have begun development of new wind
projects by the time the credit expired at the start of the new year in
order to qualify for its benefits (a mighty generous subsidy of a little
more than two cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity provided for the
first ten years of a wind farm’s operation).

That would help to
explain why 2013?s fourth quarter was witness to a whole rash of new
wind projects getting off the ground, and the number of wind power
megawatts currently under construction in the U.S. is now at a record
high — and why the wind lobby is continuing their ever-vigilant push for
the PTC’s renewal. Via WaPo:

Wind power advocates urged Congress
on Thursday to quickly restore the production tax credit that expired
at the end of 2013, saying that a prolonged period without it threatens
gains made in recent years.

Officials from a wind power company, a
steel company and the American Wind Energy Association said the loss of
the 2.3-cents per kilowatt hour tax credit will directly translate into
lost jobs. Despite continued demand, steel companies, wind energy firms
and utilities will not devote their money and resources to wind power
without the certainty that the credit provides, they said.

“We
have to have a quick extension” of the credit, said Jaime Steve,
director of government affairs at Pattern Energy, which runs wind power
projects in the United States, Canada and Chile. “This is about people’s
jobs. …

Congress allowed a variety of tax breaks, worth a total
of about $50 billion a year, to expire on Dec. 31. The 2013 production
tax credit, designated specifically for wind power, cost $12 billion
over 10 years.

Ugh. Despite more than thirty years of generous
government subsidization, the wind industry still quite literally lives
and dies by the corporate welfare they receive via taxpayer largesse,
and you can be darn sure they’ll but up a fight for it. They’ll do
everything they can to once again persuade Congress to capitulate to
their demands for continued top-down market manipulation, but perhaps
they should examine the scenario currently playing out in Spain. In just
the past year, the government was forced to acknowledge the fiscal and
economic disaster they brought on themselves with their heavy renewables
subsidization, and they are now engaged in a precipitous comedown from
their ambitious renewables central planning — and yes, their wind
industry is also flipping out about it, via the WSJ:

The new
formula, described in more than 1,500 pages of documents, calculates a
level of “reasonable profitability” that each type of project can expect
during its decadeslong life span. The calculations take into account,
for example, how long a wind farm has been generating power and how much
in subsidies it has already received. The level of “reasonable
profitability” would determine the size of future subsidies the project
can receive.

AEE, Spain’s wind-energy association, said wind
farms representing 37% of the country’s installed wind-power capacity
would receive no further subsidies under the proposal and would have to
derive revenue only from selling electricity at market price. The rest
of the wind farms would see their subsidies halved, AEE said in a
written statement, and some companies would have trouble paying debts if
the proposal passes.

The proposal “is a historic mistake,” the association said.“Reasonable
profitability“? Yeah, that’s a thing that Spain does now. Perhaps the
“historic mistake” was doubling down on so much unsustainable
subsidization without regard to price efficiency, no?

In
January 2011 President Obama – stung by an electoral rebuke that cost
his party control of the House of Representatives – issued an executive
order attempting to reassure the public regarding his rapidly expanding
regulatory state.

Obama’s order instructed federal agencies to
“identify and use the best, most innovative, and least burdensome tools
for achieving regulatory ends.” It also instructed them to “propose or
adopt a regulation only upon a reasoned determination that its benefits
justify its costs.”

Months later, though, Obama’s Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) released its 180-page Utility MACT rule – one of
the costliest regulations in American history.

It is time to call out this enviro-bureaucratic conspiracy for what it
is: The most elaborate, expensive, egregious government-subsidized hoax
in human history.

Intended to impose maximum achievable control
technology (MACT) over hazardous air pollutants, the rule -- part of a
broader war on cheap energy -- stemmed from a 2000 EPA determination
that it was “appropriate and necessary” for the agency to regulate
mercury emissions from power plants under the 1990 Clean Air Act.

How
did the EPA reach this determination? By projecting a rise in mercury
emissions from 46 to 60 tons per year by 2010 (even though emissions
actually declined to 29 tons over that time period).

Nonetheless,
based on this false data (and fuzzy science regarding prenatal mercury
exposure) the EPA promulgated the Utility MACT rule in early 2012
despite identifying health benefits of only $500,000 to $6 million
annually – at an estimated cost of nearly $11 billion per year. Industry
experts place the compliance costs much higher – at $84 billion over
four years.

That’s not the truly frightening component of this
rule, though. Like Obama's socialized medicine bureaucracy, his
“envirocrats” are making it up as they go along.

“We may
determine it is necessary to regulate under (the Clean Air Act) even if
we are uncertain whether the rule will address the identified hazards,”
the rule states, adding “we believe it is reasonable to err on the side
of regulation of such highly toxic pollutants in the face of
uncertainty.”

This, in a nutshell, is the modus operandi of
Obama’s regulatory state: Erring on the side of government intrusion no
matter what the outcome.

The forces driving these policies are no big secret.

Recently
emails obtained by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute under the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) revealed senior EPA officials had
been meeting with leaders of the radical environmental lobby in an
effort to kill the Keystone XL pipeline – an energy project which boasts
broad bipartisan support in Congress.

“These damning emails make
it clear that the Obama administration has been actively trying to stop
this important project for years,” U.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.)
said.

Previous FOIAs submitted by this organization uncovered
similarly cozy conspiracies with far left environmentalists to shut down
coal-fired plants – including one involving a high-ranking EPA
administrator who used his personal email address to secretly plot
coal’s demise.

Another bombshell that dropped recently was the
testimony of former EPA official John Beale, who testified before
Congress regarding meetings he had in 2009 with EPA director Gina
McCarthy (then head of the agency’s air and radiation division).

The
subject of Beale and McCarthy’s “deep discussions?” Ways the government
could “modify the DNA of the capitalist system” to make its regulations
reach even deeper into the American economy.

Now we have arrived
at the heart of the matter, haven’t we? This isn’t about the
environment. It isn’t about protecting our natural resources, preserving
pristine lands, safeguarding endangered species or keeping Americans’
safe and healthy.

This is about money and power.

With NASA
data confirming that the “pause” in global warming continued through
2013, it is time to call out this enviro-bureaucratic conspiracy for
what it is: The most elaborate, expensive, egregious
government-subsidized hoax in human history – a massive conspiracy aimed
at redistributing wealth from the industrial world to the third world
and expanding dependency (and government power) here at home.

At
the leading edge of this conspiracy – working in lockstep with the
enviro-radicals – is Obama’s EPA, which has become a clear and present
danger to American free enterprise, energy independence, the rule of law
and U.S. sovereignty. Any U.S. lawmaker who is serious about creating
new jobs, lowering energy costs and preserving our constitutional form
of government must make gutting this rogue bureaucracy their top
priority.

It is time to de-fang the EPA -- and lawmakers can take
a critical first step in that direction by defunding enforcement
budgets for job-crippling edicts like the Utility MACT rule and other
radical Obama-era regulations.

IMF Chief: “Unless we take action on climate change, future generations will be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled”

Responding
to hyperbolic rhetoric on climate change by Christine Lagarde, head of
the International Monetary Fund, Friends of Science point out that her
comments are not supported by the recent IPCC report, the exaggerated
climate models’ failed predictions or the evidence of no global warming
in 16+ years. Unrestrained terrifying statements are damaging the mental
health of children and youth; in fact Friends of Science recent report
on the alleged 97% consensus shows only 1-3% of scientists in 3 of 4
"consensus" surveys explicitly stated agreement with the IPCC
declarations on global warming, and no agreement with a catastrophic
view.

Friends of Science are denouncing recent remarks on climate
change by Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International
Monetary Fund, as being unsupported by science, as reported in Canada's
Globe and Mail Feb. 01, 2013.

“This is a senseless form of public
scaremongering from a body that has no expertise in climate science,”
says Ken Gregory, director of research for Friends of Science. “The
sources listed in the 2013 World Economic Forum Global Risks report
refer to very outdated climate information.”

In a recent report
entitled “97% Consensus? No! Global Warming Math Myths and Social
Proofs.” Friends of Science demonstrate that only 1-3% of scientists
surveyed in 3 of the most-cited consensus surveys, explicitly agree with
the claim that more than half of the global warming since 1950 was
caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Many scientists see carbon dioxide
as beneficial and though humankind’s impact on climate is evident, it is
nominal.

“Using frightening rhetoric like Madame Lagarde’s
statements that “future generations will be roasted, toasted, fried and
grilled” is very irresponsible,” says Gregory. “The latest
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests no such thing.
The IPCC reduced its estimate of future warming in their recent report.
There has been no warming since 1998."

On July 18, 2013 Roger
Pielke, Jr. presented testimony to the US Senate that extreme weather
has diminished and the hottest days in North America were during the
drought of the 1930’s.

“This
is a type of psychological terror – Children across the developed world
are suffering from depression thanks to such unrestrained rhetoric,”
says Gregory.

Bjorn Lomberg addressed this issue in his June 15,
2009 article “Scared Silly Over Climate” in The Guardian. In it he cites
cases of children obsessed with saving polar bears, terrified
themselves of dying of global warming,

“As noted in our recent
report on the 97% ‘nonsensus’ – this type of psychological manipulation
is intended to force people to comply,” says Gregory.

Environment
News Service reported on Jan. 25, 2014 Lagarde’s demands for more
investment in green energy – a sector that is facing spectacular
collapse around the world, and the interest in pricing carbon appear to
be connected to World Bank green investments.

The World Bank has
invested heavily in carbon and green energy schemes for Third World
Countries, but is having trouble finding a trading partner now that the
carbon markets of Europe are worthless.

CBC reported Jan. 21,
2014 that the World Economic Forum on Energy and Climate Change will be
held in Alberta, Canada April 24-25, 2014.

Says Gregory. “Can
Canadian resource industries expect a fair hearing when the Managing
Director of the IMF, is making catastrophic climate change predictions
based on faulty and unscientific information?”

Citing an
April 11, 2013 Fraser Institute study by Canadian economist Ross
McKitrick, Gregory states ”Renewable ‘green’ energy like wind and solar
have proven to be some 10 times the cost of conventional fuel with no
net environmental benefit.”

After a decade of climate science
review, Friends of Science hold the position that the sun is the main
driver of climate change, not you. Not carbon dioxide (CO2).

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

6 February, 2014

A Tale of Two Droughts

Despite
recent sporadic rain, California is still in the worst extended drought
in its brief recorded history. If more storms do not arrive, the old
canard that California could withstand two droughts -- but never three
-- will be tested for the first time in memory.

There is little
snow in the state's towering Sierra Nevada mountains, the source of much
of the surface water that supplies the state's populated center and
south. The vast Central Valley aquifer is being tapped as never before,
as farms and municipalities deepen wells and boost pump size. Too many
straws are now competing to suck out the last drops at the bottom of the
collective glass.

The vast 4-million-acre farming belt along the
west side of the Central Valley is slowly drying up. Unlike valley
agriculture to the east that still has a viable aquifer, these huge
farms depend entirely on surface water deliveries from the distant and
usually wet northern part of the state. So if the drought continues,
billions of dollars of Westside orchards and vineyards will die, row
cropland will lay fallow, and farm-supported small towns will likewise
dry up.

There is a terrible irony to all this. Never have
California farm prices been higher, given huge Pacific export demand.
Never have California farmers been more savvy in saving water to produce
record harvests of nutritious, clean and safe food. And never has
farming been so central to a state suffering from the aftershocks of a
housing collapse, chronic high unemployment, overregulation and the
nation's highest sales, income and gas taxes.

Yet there are
really two droughts -- nature's, and its man-made twin. In the early
1980s, when the state was not much more than half its current
population, an affluent coastal corridor convinced itself that nirvana
was possible, given the coastal world-class universities, the new
dot.com riches of the Silicon Valley, the year-round temperate weather,
and the booming entertainment, tourism and wine industries.

Apparently,
Pacific corridor residents from San Diego to Berkeley had acquired the
affluence not to worry so much about the old Neanderthal concerns like
keeping up freeways and airports -- and their parents' brilliantly
designed system of canals, reservoirs and dams that had turned their
state from a natural desert into a man-made paradise. They have become
similar to the rarified Eloi of science-fiction writer H.G. Wells' "The
Time Machine," who live dreamy existences without any clue how to supply
their own daily necessities.

Californians have not built a major
reservoir since the New Melones Dam more than 30 years ago. As the
state subsequently added almost 20 million people, it assumed that it
was exempt from creating any more "unnatural" Sierra lakes and canals to
store precious water during California's rarer wet and snow-filled
years.

Then, short-sightedness soon became conceit. Green
utopians went further and demanded that an ailing 3-inch bait fish in
the San Francisco delta receive more fresh oxygenated water. In the last
five years, they have successfully gone to court to force millions of
acre-feet of contracted irrigation water to be diverted from farms to
flow freely out to sea.

Others had even grander ideas of having
salmon again in their central rivers, as they recalled fishing stories
of their ancestors from when the state population was a fifth of its
present size and farming a fraction of its present acreage. So they too
sued to divert even more water to the sea in hopes of having game fish
swim from the Pacific Ocean up to arid Fresno County on their way to the
supposedly ancestral Sierra spawning grounds.

The wages of both
nature's drought and human folly are coming due. Unless it rains or
snows in biblical fashion in the next 60 days, we could see surreal
things in California -- towns without water, farms reverting to scrub,
majestic parks with dead landscaping -- fit for Hollywood's disaster
movies.

Instead of an adult state with millions of acre-feet
stored in new reservoirs, California is still an adolescent culture that
believes that it has the right to live as if it were the age of the
romantic 19th-century naturalist John Muir -- amid a teeming
40-million-person 21st-century megalopolis.

The California
disease is characteristic of comfortable postmodern societies that
forget the sources of their original wealth. The state may have the most
extensive reserves of gas and oil in the nation, the largest number of
cars on the road -- and the greatest resistance to drilling for fuel
beneath its collective feet. After last summer's forest fires wiped out a
billion board feet of timber, we are still arguing over whether loggers
will be allowed to salvage such precious lumber, or instead should let
it rot to enhance beetle and woodpecker populations.

In 2014, nature yet again reminded California just how fragile -- and often pretentious -- a place it has become.

State Dep't.: Not Building Keystone Pipeline Could Increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Not
building the 875-mile Keystone XL Pipeline could result in the release
of up to 42 percent more greenhouse gases than would be released by
building it, according to the State Department.

Not building the
pipeline “is unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in
the [Canadian] oil sands or the continued demand for heavy crude oil at
refineries in the United States,” the department noted in a long-awaited
environmental report released January 31st.

But the “No Build”
option is likely to result in an increased number of oil spills, six
more deaths annually, and up to 42 percent higher greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions, the State Department concluded.

The proposed 36-inch
pipeline would transport 830,000 barrels of crude oil each day from
western Canada through the Bakken oil fields of Montana and South Dakota
before connecting to an existing pipeline in Nebraska on its way to
Gulf Coast refineries.

The project will create an estimated 42,100 jobs and add $3.4 billion to the U.S. economy.

TransCanada
first applied for a presidential permit to build the pipeline in 2008,
but the controversial project has been in limbo ever since the State
Department delayed a decision to issue the permit in 2011 due to
environmentalists’ concerns that the pipeline would increase GHG
emissions and threaten underground aquifers.

It will do neither, according to the project’s Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).

However,
State Department spokesperson Marie Harf warned reporters during the
department’s daily press briefing Friday that the release of the SEIS
“is not a decision. It’s another step in the process as prescribed by
the executive order,” adding that Secretary of State John Kerry will
become involved in the Keystone pipeline permit process “for the first
time.”

“There’s no deadline for Secretary Kerry to make a
decision,” Harf said. “I stress that this [SEIS] is only one factor in
the determination that will weigh many other factors as well, and for
Secretary Kerry, climate and environmental priorities will of course be
part of his decision-making, as will a range of other issues.”

In
a conference call with reporters after the SEIS was released, Kerri-Ann
Jones, Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International
Environmental and Scientific Affairs, reiterated Harf’s comment that
“this document is only one factor that will be coming into the review
process for the permit. This is one of the elements that we will be
looking at as we move into the national interest determination.”

The
State Department, which must sign off on the project because it crosses
an international border, notes that crude oil extracted from the
western oil sands in Alberta will still be shipped to refineries by
railcar or tanker even if the pipeline permit is not approved. And that
comes with its own set of hazards, the SEIS pointed out.

Using a
“wells to wheels” lifecycle analysis that starts with the extraction of
crude oil and follows it to its end-use as gasoline or diesel fuel, the
SEIS noted that “the total annual GHG emissions (direct and
indirect) attributed to the No Action scenarios range from 28 to 42
percent greater than for the proposed [pipeline] Project.”

That’s
because the fumes released by the combustion of diesel fuel from
railcars and trucks, and the extra electricity needed for expanded
marine terminals to handle oil tankers and barges, would create
significantly higher levels of GHG emissions than the pipeline itself.

“There
is also a greater potential for injuries and fatalities associated with
rail transport relative to pipelines,” the State Department report
noted. “Adding 830,000 barrels per day to the yearly transport
mode-volume would result in an estimated 49 additional injuries and six
additional fatalities for the No Action rail scenarios compared to one
additional injury and no fatalities for the proposed Project on an
annual basis.”

The SEIS also points out that “rail transport has
more reported releases of crude oil per ton-mile than pipeline or marine
transport.”

Of 1,692 oil spills reported to the U.S. Department
of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety
Administration(PHMSA) between January 2002 and July 2012, “321 were pipe
incidents and 1,027 were involving different equipment components such
as tanks, valves or pumps,” according to the SEIS.

However, “the
number of barrels released per year for the No Action scenarios is
higher than what is projected for the proposed [pipeline] Project,” the
State Department report stated. And although more oil is released per
incident when a pipeline fails, “this constraint is offset by the
increased statistical likelihood of spills associated with these
alternative modes of crude oil transport relative to pipelines.”

The
other major environmental concern holding up approval of the pipeline
is the possibility that an oil spill from the pipeline could contaminate
the underground Northern High Plains Aquifer (which includes the
Ogallala Aquifer) and the Great Plains Aquifer (GPA). But the SEIS notes
that this is highly unlikely due to the geological characteristics of
the area:“Modeling indicates that aquifer characteristics would inhibit
the spread of released oil, and impacts from a release on water quality
would be limited.”

The SEIS also considered environmentalists’
concern that the Keystone pipeline, which would cause a loss of only two
acres of permanent wetlands, would adversely affect endangered
wildlife. The report concluded that it would not.

“Of the
federally listed, proposed, and candidate species, the endangered
American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus) is the only
species that is likely to be adversely affected by the proposed
Project…but not likely to jeopardize [its] continued existence,” the
report stated.

Nor would the Keystone project seriously impact
the livelihoods of the 263,300 people living in the sparsely populated
pipeline corridor.

“After construction, approximately 5,569 acres
would be retained within permanent easements or acquired for operation
of the proposed Project,” the SEIS added, but property owners would
still be able to “farm or conduct other limited activities” within the
pipeline’s 50-foot right of way.

Environmental
groups are warning President Obama that his liberal base might stay
home on Election Day if he approves the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Proponents
of the $5.4 billion Canada-to-Texas pipeline say their case is buoyed
by the State Department’s environmental analysis of the project, which
was released to great fanfare last week.

But critics say approval
of the project could sow liberal discontent and hurt Democratic chances
in 2014 — including a host of contests that will likely decide who
controls the Senate during the final years of the Obama White House.

“It
is very likely that there will be negative consequences for Democrats
if Keystone were approved,” said Kate Colarulli, the associate director
for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Oil campaign. “This is a tremendous
opportunity to protect the climate and build the Democratic base if
Obama rejects Keystone XL.”

Green groups are promising acts of
“civil disobedience,” if Obama signs off on the project and contend
Keystone’s approval could torpedo the president’s broader climate change
agenda.

The White House insists the electoral ramifications
wouldn’t play a part in the president’s final call on the pipeline,
which would carry crude from Alberta oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries.

“He’s
been very clear that he’s going to insulate this process from
politics,” White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said Sunday on
“Meet the Press.”

The issue, however, is irreversibly entangled
in politics, with Republicans and some Democrats pressing for the
pipeline’s approval and environmentalists waging war to stop it.

Jamie
Henn of the green group 350.org called the dispute over Keystone “the
most iconic fight of a generation” and said the youth vote, which played
an important part in Obama’s rise, could hang in the balance.

“A
Keystone XL approval will turn a lot of people off from the process,
and they will get involved in action that could be disruptive,” Henn
said.

More than 75,000 activists have threatened to engage in
acts of civil disobedience if Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry
gives Keystone XL the green light, Colarulli said.

Sign-carrying
activists opposed to the pipeline have been a fixture at speeches and
campaign events featuring the president. A dramatic increase in protests
could muddle the party’s message, said Daniel J. Weiss, director of
climate strategy at the Center for American Progress.

“If he
approves the pipeline, the number of people protesting Keystone outside
the Beltway could increase by a hundredfold or more,” he said.

A
final decision on the pipeline is likely months off. Now that the
environmental analysis is finished, a 90-day interagency review weighing
the national interest of the project begins. Simultaneously, the State
Department will open up the public comment period for 30 days.

That means everything should wrap up by June — just as the election season reaches a fever pitch.

The
Keystone issue is certain to play heavily in a host of contested Senate
races, as Republicans attempt to wrest control of the chamber from
Democrats.

And while a “yes” to the project by Obama would likely
help vulnerable Democratic Sens. Mark Begich (Alaska), Mary Landrieu
(La.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.) in their reelection bids, it could hurt
Democrats’ chances of holding onto the Senate and keeping seats in the
House, activists say.

Democratic candidates running for Senate
seats in red-leaning states West Virginia, Montana and South Dakota will
have to woo Republican voters, and that means walking a fine line on
the Keystone issue.

“They need votes on all sides of the issue,” said Nathan Gonzales, deputy editor of The Rothenberg Political Report.

At
the same time, some candidates clearly view Keystone as an opportunity
to draw a distinction between themselves and Obama in GOP country.

“There
are more than a handful of Democrats running in red states looking to
declare their independence from the president and the national
Democratic Party,” Gonzales said.

The State Department’s
environmental analysis highlights multiple factors at play that could
influence agency heads and Kerry on whether the project serves the
nation’s interests.

The report notes that a steep drop in oil
prices and “long-term constraints on any new pipeline capacity,” which
could result in higher transportation costs of the crude oil, could
significantly affect oil sands production.

On the other hand, the
report states Keystone XL would transport 830,000 barrels of oil each
day, adding an extra 1.3 million to 27.4 million metric tons of carbon
dioxide to the atmosphere every year.

While the report doesn’t
make the claim that Keystone would drastically “exacerbate emissions,”
it does state the crude oil would make it to market either way, and as a
result, Obama will have to determine if that oil will be burned even if
he denies the project.

An Obama approval of the pipeline could
undermine the president’s larger efforts to counter the effects of
global warming through regulatory action, multiple observers said.

Some
have suggested Obama announce he is approving the project in concert
with other actions to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The
Environmental Protection Agency is due to propose new standards
for existing plants in June, about the same time a decision on Keystone
is expected.

That strategy could help blunt the political pain
from approving the pipeline, but it would do little to build support for
the EPA regulations among major industry and environmental players in
Washington, Weiss said.

“Approval of the pipeline could distract
some allies on climate pollution reductions without gaining the support
from any of the opponents of the power plant rule,” he said.

Elijah
Zarlin, a senior campaign manager with activist group CREDO, said
Keystone has become a litmus test for Obama in the eyes of
environmentalists.

Zarlin said rejecting Keystone is the best
chance Obama has at succeeding with his climate regulations, including
the proposed limits on carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.

“The
best chance of getting these regulations done is by energizing the
base,” Zarlin said. “We have seen when the base is energized that it
helps the president. But the question is: Do we want it more than
he does?”

All
life on earth depends on CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere. Its
concentration is currently around 400 ppm (parts per million) or 0.04%.
Life would cease to exist if the CO2 level were to drop to half of
that.plant wilting At 200 ppm, the partial pressure of CO2 in the
atmosphere would be too small for most plants to take up the CO2 and
convert it to plant matter.

But isn’t the government telling you
that CO2 is just about the greatest villain of modern times? Isn’t
it true that CO2 is near the “tipping point” of causing runaway
“climate change?”

Natural CO2

The earth has had CO2 in its
atmosphere forever. In fact, many million years ago, its level was much
higher; ten to 100 times higher than now. All that natural CO2 came
from volcanoes and smaller volcanic vents all over the globe. Of course,
nature has not stopped producing that, not at all. At any time, a
couple of dozen volcanoes are really active somewhere around the world,
but even when they are “dormant” many emit massive amounts of volcanic
gases all the time. That’s where all the natural CO2 in our atmosphere
has come from ever since the earth was created.

Manmade CO2

Manmade
CO2, in more scientific terms “anthropogenic” carbon dioxide is
released by mankind’s burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural
gas. That CO2 is called “bad” for the environment. Barack Obama calls
it “carbon pollution” and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) thinks it needs to be controlled. The consequence is that
many governments want to tax it, which makes it “good” for them.

CO2 is Vital to Life on Earth

Strictly
from a chemical point of view, one CO2 molecule is the same as the
next. There is no difference between manmade and natural CO2 molecules,
none at all. The trees in the forests and the algae in the water use
them all for the same purpose and in the same way to build up biomass—in
plain English, to grow. The plants in the farmers’ fields rely on it as
much as the fish feeding on the smaller prey in the water which feeds
on algae. Take away that vital nutrient and the whole food chain is in
peril; especially the top tier, that‘s us humans.

The Difference between Good and Bad CO2

The
difference between manmade (“bad”) and natural (“good”) CO2 is not a
chemical one. It only exists in the minds of politicians, bureaucrats
and scientists who understand the principle of a dollar sign in front of
a number.

Natural CO2 comes without any such sign and,
therefore, is of no consequence. Obviously, that’s prevents it from
being manipulated or taxed – a fact which makes it then “bad.”

In
contrast, manmade CO2 is highly $$$-laden and therefore now
“good.” And that, dear readers, is the only difference between
“good” and “bad” CO2!

Higher
carbon dioxide levels are coming from undeveloped countries in
equatorial Africa and South America not from UK, EU and US, shows
Japanese government satellite data. Japan abandons its CO2 targets
as separate scientific evidence suggests Earth is fast approaching a
new ice age.fig 1

Japanese climate satellite data supports
climate realist Professor Murry Salby in rejecting global warming
theory; humans are not responsible for measured increases in atmospheric
carbon dioxide (CO2) affirm evidence in Report from Japanese Aerospace
exploration agency (JAXA).The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency
(JAXA) has revealed that its climate satellite IBUKI data shows that the
growth in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is coming from third world
under developed forested equatorial regions of Africa and South America.

The Japanese satellite maps show that the asphalt and concreted
industrial nations are “mopping up” carbon dioxide faster than their
manufacturers and consumers can emit it. Astonishingly, this is
the opposite to what is being relayed to the public from an unswerving
alarmist climate media lobby. The JAXA evidence shows that US and
western european nations are areas where the carbon dioxide levels are
lowest!

In personal communication with leading climate
scientist, Richard Lindzen, emeritus professor of atmospheric physics at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he told this author that there
was no surprise that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes mostly
from high vegetation forested low industrial areas rather than developed
countries like the US, UK and EU.

This is the opposite effect predicted by
alarmist global warming theory. While the Japanese rely on verifiable
physical evidence as observed by satellites the climate alarmists base
their doomsayig claims on 'homogenized' (computer-manipulated)
ground-based temperature recording stations.

Independent
analysts say the data from ground-based recording stations has been
deliberately altered to show an imaginary warming trend not borne out by
the 'raw' (unadulterated) temperature reasdings. Moreover, the number
of sites for such ground thermometers have been reduced from 6,000 to
1,500 over several years, with most of those in cooler regions now
omitted. (For more on this see “While the Earth Endures” by Rev
Philip Foster St Matthew Publishing www.stmatthewpublishing.co.uk
).

The upshot of this systematic cherry-picking gives
temperature data that is skewed towards painting a (false) picture of a
rapidly warming climate. By contrast satellite data, by its very nature
of coming from satellites, cannot be altered by human hands (see figure 2
[right] from Murry Salby lecture in House of Common, November 6,
2013).Salby data

In this satellite image the blue colour in the
northern hemisphere represents low carbon dioxide emissions from the
industrial nations of the US, UK and EU. The red colour in the southern
hemisphere represents high carbon emissions from forested vegetation
areas in equatorial regions. This is precisely the opposite of what an
alarmist and quiescent mainstream media would have you believe.

For
a detailed account of the lecture by Professor Salby see the Scottish
climate and energy forum web site: www.scef.org.uk

What an
increasing number of independent experts are seeing is that earth is
cooling, and many predict we are on the cusp of a new Little Ice Age,
due to the decline of the bi-cenntenial component of the total solar
irradiance. Bern fig 3

Figure 4 (below) shows the
decline (credit: Dr H Abdussamatov Director of Space Physics at Polkovo
Observatory St Petersburg). As such, there will be no further global
warming this century!

Scientists accuse IPCC of fraud in use of Bern Climate Cycle formula

A
formula used by the International Panel on Climate Change (see page 34,
ARA4, WG1 Technical Summary) represents the decay of a pulse of CO2
with time t. The first constant ao has a value of 0.217. As
this first term is constant the CO2 level will always go up and never
down!

However as Dr Jonathan Drake, noted UK climate
researcher, and Mr D Alker of Principia Scientific International (PSI)
pointed out at the Edinburgh meeting with Professor Murry Salby, all
records of atmospheric CO2 concentrations past, proxy or present show
that CO2 varies both up and down on any time scale relevant to climate.
Thus, the formula used by the IPCC (right) allows them to claim wrongly
that CO2 will always increase, a convenient ploy engineered since the
inception of the modern era of climate change alarmism.ipcc formula

It
has also pointed out by Mr Alker that because the models are only
dependent upon CO2 to change temperature the ao term means that all the
climate models of the IPCC can only produce warming! Essentially, this
means that 21.7 percent of each year's human emissions of CO2, according
to this rigged IPCC formula, NEVER leaves the atmosphere, thereby
leading to an assumed accumulation of human-emitted atmopsheric CO2,
entirely the product of statistical shennanigans.

Pollution of
the atmosphere is already taken care of by the clean air acts in force
now in most countries including the UK and the US. We may reasonably
infer from the pronouncements of climate alarmists who vilify fossil
fuels, that they wish to return mankind back to the days before the
industrial revolution, when lifespans were half what they are today and
when poverty and disease were widespread.

Regardless of such
extreme ambitions today's CO2 levels stand at a miniscule 0.04 percent
of the atmosphere. The lowest it has ever been in geologic time
and dangerously low for plant life. In fact many species of plants
are dying due to the low CO2 levels - and if they die we die!

In
short, the earth needs more CO2, not less. The present rise over the
last couple of centuries is trivial compared with previous ages and most
likely due to the earth coming out of the Little Ice Age (LIA) when
records show frost fairs were extremely common and ice skaters frolicked
on the frozen River Thames. The LIA ended in 1850.

Independent
scientists who study climate say that present climate change is almost
all caused by a combination of temperature induced and moisture induced
natural releases from vegetation areas in equatorial regions of the
earth, and also from deep ocean warming during the Medieval Warm Period;
it takes several hundred years for oceans to respond by
outgassing CO2.

However with the sun now changing due to its
declining total solar irradiance and with the present static global
temperature for the past 18 years, it is clear the new Little Ice Age
could be here already (see Fig 4, right). An entirely natural
phenomena nothing to do with humans.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

5 February, 2014

A Historical Perspective on Hysterical Rhetoric

From 1948 to the present, environmental activists have declared that the sky is falling.

Suzuki hysteria

We
tend to ignore history in our daily lives. Which is too bad, because
historical perspective is one of our best defenses against foolish
ideas.

Once we realize that a long line of people have insisted,
in recent decades, that we’re on the brink of environmental disaster,
today’s climate doomsayers suddenly snap into perspective.

Absolutely
nothing new is going on here. Today’s hysteria, exaggeration, and
emotionally manipulative language are part of a larger pattern that
stretches back decades.

Human society has always had its Chicken
Littles, its risk-averse individuals, its glass-half-empty
personalities, and its drama queens. Those people have every right to
participate in societal discussions. But when we allow their voices to
dominate, everyone loses. We end up wasting time and money pursuing
illusory fixes to what may, in fact, be non-problems.

Let us,
therefore, not be confused: Al Gore didn’t invent the idea of a
“planetary emergency” with the publication of his 2006 book, An
Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What
We Can Do About It. Rather, he was repeating ideas that had been
promulgated far and wide a full 60 years earlier.

In their
illuminating paper, The Post War Intellectual Roots of the Population
Bomb, Pierre Desrochers and Christine Hoffbauer examine two US
bestsellers published in 1948. Remarkably, much of the rhetoric we hear
today is contained within the pages of these books.

In Our
Plundered Planet, Fairfield Osborn (who was born in 1887) talked about
humanity’s “mounting destruction” of the natural world, said it posed a
greater danger than the Second World War, and referred to “the day of
atonement that is drawing nearer.”

Like today’s
environmentalists, Osborn portrayed humanity as greedy and
short-sighted. He also seemed more concerned about preserving the world
for “future children” than in demonstrating empathy and compassion
toward the impoverished souls who were already alive.

A few years
later, he wrote a second, alarmist book, The Limits of the Earth, and
then edited a third, titled Our Crowded Planet.

William Vogt, who
was born in 1902, authored the other 1948 bestseller, Road to Survival.
Wikipedia tells us Vogt was an ornithologist – a person who studies
birds. But his involvement in conservation organizations led him to
shift his focus to the environmental impact of human population growth.

Like
today’s activists, Vogt was convinced we’d experience “a catastrophic
crash of our civilization” if we failed to adopt drastic measures. Sixty
years ago, he was talking about “the carrying capacity of the land” in a
manner nearly indistinguishable from the discussions we encounter today
(see here, here, and here). He, too, warned of a “day of reckoning” and
insisted that “the Day of Judgment is at hand.”

In this context,
David Suzuki - Canada’s environmentalist icon who wrote the 1990 It’s a
Matter of Survival – hardly seems to have produced a single original
idea. As I’ve previously observed,

Suzuki has
spent decades typecasting humanity as shortsighted, dangerous, and
suicidal. He says we’re stubborn, blind, incapable of grasping the
significance of our actions, and in denial.

What’s interesting is
that these ideas were well-developed decades before either Suzuki or
Gore became famous. (Suzuki was born in 1936 and Gore in 1948. This
means these books first appeared when Suzuki was 12 and during the same
year that Gore was born.)

Fairfield Osborn. William Vogt. David
Suzuki. Al Gore. Each of them is merely another bead on a string. From
1948 onward, these men have been united by their uncharitable views of
humanity, their pessimism regarding the future, and their propensity to
see planetary emergencies everywhere.

Hatred of hydrocarbons should not excuse frackophobes from learning facts or speaking factually

Deroy Murdock

Williamsport, PA. The only thing deeper than a natural-gas well is the ignorance of the anti-fracking crowd.

Fracking
– formally called hydraulic fracturing – involves briefly pumping
water, sand and chemicals into shale formations far beneath Earth’s
surface and thousands of feet below the aquifers that irrigate crops and
quench human thirst. This process cracks these rocks and liberates the
gas within. Though employed for decades with seemingly no verified
contamination of ground water, anti-fracking activists behave as if this
technology were invented specifically to poison Americans.

“Fracking
makes all water dirty,” declares a poster that Yoko Ono recently
exhibited at a Manhattan carpet store. Rants another: “Pretty soon there
will be no more water to drink.”

Reporting on an anti-fracking
event starring actor Mark Ruffalo and mystic Deepak Chopra, writer
Alisha Prakash warns: “If this process remains the status quo, our
planet will not be able to sustain life in another 100 years.”

In
contrast to all this absurd hyperventilation, consider the sworn
testimony of former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson. Hardly a right-wing
shill for Big Oil, Jackson told the House Government Reform Committee in
May 2011: “I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process
itself has affected water.” In April 2012 Jackson said, “In no case have
we made a definitive determination that the fracking process has caused
chemicals to enter groundwater.”

Naturally occurring methane
has tainted water since long before fracking was invented. However,
environmental regulators from Pennsylvania to Arkansas to California
echo Jackson. The allegation that fracking causes water pollution lacks
just one thing: proof.

Beyond this, frackophobes would be
astonished to see how much Anadarko, America’s third-largest natural-gas
producer, obsesses over health, safety, and the environment in its
Marcellus Shale operations. Anadarko and the American Petroleum
Institute discussed these practices during a summer 2013 fact-finding
tour that they hosted for journalists in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the
thriving heart of what I call Frackistan.

“We live in this
area,” says Anadarko production manager Robert Montgomery. “We love the
forests here. We want to keep the environment safe for us and our kids.”
He adds: “Regulatory agencies have been working with us every step of
the way, as we have been developing these new technologies. There’s a
whole lot of science and engineering involved, and we work side by side,
so they know what’s going on.”

Montgomery explains that, before
drilling, Anadarko identifies flora and fauna near production sites. In
Pennsylvania, it uses outdoor cameras to determine which animals
traverse the area. This helps Anadarko work with landowners after
drilling and fracking are completed, to restore their property to its
prior condition, or enhance it with new and different vegetation if the
owners want to attract certain species.

For example, a large pond
on a small hill belonging to the Elbow Fish and Game Club temporarily
holds production-related water for an adjacent development site. After
50 to 100 days of drilling and well construction, and two to five days
of fracking, about six to twelve wells will quietly begin to collect
natural gas from this field. At that point, the soil excavated for the
pond will be removed from storage and returned from whence it came.
Anadarko will plant local grasses and flowers and, except for a few
unobtrusive wellheads, the place will look largely untouched, as the
wells yield gas for 20 to 40 years.

A few minutes away by car,
several wells are being fracked on acreage owned by a farmer named
Landon. The bonuses, rents and royalties he receives for gas exploration
and production on his property enable him to put a new roof on his
house and barn, buy new equipment, and save money for retirement. But he
wants his fields and wildlife habitats protected. To that end, a thick
felt-and-rubber pad, surrounded by a large berm, prevents potential
spills from contaminating Landon’s soil.

“We even collect
rainwater that falls on the pad,” says a production worker fittingly
named Anthony Waters. “It’s pumped down the well, not put onto land.”

It
would be far cheaper to let rainwater wash over fracking gear and then
drain into the soil or roll downhill into a creek. But that’s not
Anadarko’s style.

As mentioned, fracking does not involve
constant injection and extraction of water throughout a well’s two- to
four-decade lifespan, but only for the five days or less it usually
takes to frack a well. This is the rough equivalent of getting a
vaccination for five seconds, rather than living with a constant
intravenous drip. For all its supposed evils, in this analogy, fracking
is like a flu shot.

The amount of water involved here is
microscopic, compared to other, thirstier fuels. According to the U.S.
Energy Department, it typically takes about three gallons of water to
generate 1 million British thermal units of energy from deep-shale
natural gas. For conventional oil: 14 gallons. Coal: 22.5. Tar sands:
47.5. Corn ethanol: 15,805. Soy biodiesel: 44,500 gallons. Cultivating
corn and soybeans requires irrigation, fertilizer and pesticides, which
highlights just how stupid it is to turn food into fuel.

Fracking
the Marcellus Shale happens some 6,000 feet underground. That is about
5,000 feet (more than three Empire State Buildings) below groundwater
supplies. Drills and pipes penetrate aquifers, but all the way through
more than a mile of rock they are encased in multiple layers of steel
and concrete designed to separate drinking water from fracking fluids
(which are 99 percent water and sand and less than 1 percent chemicals).

An
old-fashioned well was like a vertical straw that sucked up gas just
from the bottom tip. Horizontal wells start from one small spot at the
surface and then fan out far underground. They then draw in gas from
across a wide area of gas-bearing shale, as if through small holes in
vacuum hoses laid flat on the floor. Having multiple wells drilled
through a limited space on the surface means reduced impact on farmland
and habitats, as well as fewer roads and trucks.

Is there risk in
all of this? Of course. If not, Anadarko would not take these
precautions. However, risk encircles us. Seat belts are not a reason to
ban automobiles. Instead, they are evidence that managing risk lets
people live their lives rather than hide at home – which is perfectly
safe . . . until fires, floods, tornadoes and burglars come knocking.

Rather
than peddle ill-informed nonsense and crazy lies about fracking, Yoko
Ono and company should learn what Anadarko is doing and encourage other
producers to adopt its standards as best practices. And if another
company is cleaner and safer, challenge Anadarko and its competitors to
learn that producer’s lessons. The frackophobes’ hatred of hydrocarbons
should not prevent them from learning nor excuse them from speaking
factually.

Unlike Pennsylvania, New York State is sitting on its
adjacent portion of the Marcellus Shale and studying its collective
navel, while farmers and their loved ones live on the edge of poverty
and approach bankruptcy. The Empire State and the rest of the U.S.
should harness fracking’s surprisingly clean technology and develop this
country’s bountiful natural-gas reserves – carefully, responsibly and
for everyone’s benefit.

What’s not to like? This fuel is all-American, and the revenues stay here – not in the hands of people who want to kill us.

Via email

The Keystone saga

Even Ed Schultz says it "Makes Sense" to Build the Keystone Pipeline

Remember,
a Pew Research Center survey conducted last year showed that the
preponderance of respondents -- including more than half of all
Democrats -- wanted the Keystone Pipeline completed. And more recently,
as Christine reported last week, the U.S. State Department’s own
internal study concluded that building it would not “greatly increase”
carbon emissions or "greatly worsen" climate change.

Granted,
this is just one government study, but considering the fact that the
president did say he would not approve the pipeline if it “significantly
exacerbate[s] the problem of carbon pollution,” it seems his list of
grievances with the project is growing shorter by the day:

The
president and his Democratic allies in Congress have not seen eye to eye
on this issue. In truth, Pew called the debate raging over Keystone
“perhaps the most politically contentious energy issue in Barack Obama’s
second term.” Even Ed Schultz isn't on board with the White House.

I
believe Schultz’s argument in favor of building the pipeline is
two-fold: One, the United States runs on oil. It drives our economy. And
even though “climate change” does exist, he concedes, “we’re not
getting out of the oil business” any time soon. Two, building the
pipeline “makes sense” in part because it’s safer than continuing to use
old and obsolete rail cars to transport oil across large tracts of
land. Indeed, that same State Department report noted above concluded
that without building Keystone, on average, the rail-related death toll
in this country could rise by six every year.

That’s not an
argument in favor of building the Keystone XL pipeline in and of itself,
of course, but it certainly puts additional pressure on the White House
to finally approve the measure. So we'll wait and see if the study
meaningfully tips the scale in supporters' favor.

The president is expected to announce his decision sometime before the 2014 midterm elections.

Greenies are all in favour of "sustainable" use of resources -- but not when it's actually practical

It
seems that even wood isn’t green or renewable enough anymore. The EPA
has recently banned the production and sale of 80 percent of America’s
current wood-burning stoves, the oldest heating method known to mankind
and mainstay of rural homes and many of our nation’s poorest residents.
The agency’s stringent one-size-fits-all rules apply equally to heavily
air-polluted cities and far cleaner plus typically colder off-grid
wilderness areas such as large regions of Alaska and the American West.

While
the EPA’s most recent regulations aren’t altogether new, their impacts
will nonetheless be severe. Whereas restrictions had previously banned
wood-burning stoves that didn’t limit fine airborne particulate
emissions to 15 micrograms per cubic meter (?g/m3) of air, the change
will impose a maximum 12 ?g/m3 limit. To put this amount in context, the
EPA estimates that secondhand tobacco smoke in a closed car can expose a
person to 3,000-4,000 ?g/m3 of particulates.

Most wood stoves
that warm cabin and home residents from coast to coast cannot meet that
standard. Older stoves that don’t cannot be traded in for updated types,
but instead must be rendered inoperable, destroyed, or recycled as
scrap metal.

The impacts of the EPA ruling will affect many
families. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 survey statistics,
2.4 million American housing units (12 percent of all homes) burned wood
as their primary heating fuel, compared with 7 percent that depended
upon fuel oil.

Local governments in some states have gone even
further than the EPA, banning not only the sale of noncompliant stoves,
but even their use as fireplaces. As a result, owners face fines for
infractions. Puget Sound, Washington, is one such location. Montréal,
Canada, proposes to eliminate all fireplaces within its city limits.

Only
weeks after the EPA enacted its new stove rules, attorneys general of
seven states sued the agency to crack down on wood-burning water heaters
as well. The lawsuit was filed by Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts,
New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont, all predominantly Democrat
states. Claiming that the new EPA regulations didn’t go far enough to
decrease particle pollution levels, the plaintiffs cited agency
estimates that outdoor wood boilers will produce more than 20 percent of
wood-burning emissions by 2017. A related suit was filed by the
environmental group EarthJustice.

Did EPA require a motivational
incentive to tighten its restrictions? Sure, about as much as Br’er
Rabbit needed to persuade Br’er Fox to throw him into the briar patch.
This is but another example of EPA and other government agencies working
with activist environmental groups to sue and settle on claims that
afford leverage to enact new regulations which they lack statutory
authority to otherwise accomplish.

“Sue and Settle “ practices,
sometimes referred to as “friendly lawsuits,” are cozy deals through
which far-left radical environmental groups file lawsuits against
federal agencies wherein court-ordered “consent decrees” are issued
based upon a prearranged settlement agreement they collaboratively craft
together in advance behind closed doors. Then, rather than allowing the
entire process to play out, the agency being sued settles the lawsuit
by agreeing to move forward with the requested action both they and the
litigants want.

And who pays for this litigation? All too often
we taxpayers are put on the hook for legal fees of both colluding
parties. According to a 2011 GAO report, this amounted to millions of
dollars awarded to environmental organizations for EPA litigations
between 1995 and 2010. Three “Big Green” groups received 41 percent of
this payback, with Earthjustice accounting for 30 percent ($4,655,425).
Two other organizations with histories of lobbying for regulations EPA
wants while also receiving agency fundng are the American Lung
Association (ALA) and the Sierra Club.

In addition, the
Department of Justice forked over at least $43 million of our money
defending the EPA in court between 1998 and 2010. This didn’t include
money spent by the EPA for its legal costs in connection with those
ripoffs, because the EPA doesn’t keep track of its attorneys’ time on a
case-by-case basis.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has concluded
that Sue and Settle rulemaking is responsible for many of EPA’s “most
controversial, economically significant regulations that have plagued
the business community for the past few years.” Included are
regulations on power plants, refineries, mining operations, cement
plants, chemical manufacturers, and a host of other industries. Such
consent decree-based rulemaking enables EPA to argue to Congress: “The
court made us do it.”

Directing special attention to these
congressional end run practices, Louisiana Senator David Vitter, top
Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has
launched an investigation. Last year he asked his Louisiana Attorney
General Buddy Caldwell to join with AG’s of 13 other states who filed a
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) seeking all correspondence between EPA
and a list of 80 environmental, labor union, and public interest
organizations that have been party to litigation since the start of the
Obama Administration.

Other concerned and impacted parties have
little influence over such court procedures and decisions. While the
environmental group is given a seat at the table, outsiders who are most
impacted are excluded, with no opportunity to object to the
settlements. No public notice about the settlement is released until the
agreement is filed in court…after the damage has been done.

In a
letter to Caldwell, Senator Vitter wrote: “The collusion between
federal bureaucrats and the organizations entering consent agreements
under a shroud of secrecy represents the antithesis of a transparent
government, and your participation in the FOIA request will help
Louisianans understand the process by which these settlements were
reached.”

Fewer citizens would challenge the EPA’s regulatory
determinations were it not for its lack of accountability and
transparency in accomplishing through a renegade pattern of actions what
they cannot achieve through democratic legislative processes.

A
recent example sets unachievable CO2 emission limits for new power
plants. As I reported in my January 14 column, a group within the EPA’s
own Science Advisory Board (SAB) determined that the studies upon which
that regulation was based had never been responsibly peer reviewed, and
that there was no evidence that those limits can be accomplished using
available technology.

Compared with huge consequences of the
EPA’s regulatory war on coal, the fuel source that provides more than 40
percent of America’s electricity, a clamp-down on humble residential
wood-burning stoves and future water heaters may seem to many people as a
merely a trifling or inconsequential matter. That is, unless it happens
to significantly affect your personal life.

As a Washington
Times editorial emphasized, the ban is of great concern to many families
in cold remote off-grid locations. It noted, for example, that
“Alaska’s 663,000 square miles is mostly forestland, offering residents
and abundant source of affordable firewood. When county officials
floated a plan to regulate the burning of wood, residents were
understandably inflamed.”

Quoting Representative Tammie Wilson
speaking to the Associated Press, the Times reported: “Everyone wants
clean air. We just want to make sure that we can also heat our homes.”
Wilson continued: “Rather than fret over the EPA’s computer–model–based
warning about the dangers of inhaling soot from wood smoke, residents
have more pressing concerns on their minds as the immediate risk of
freezing when the mercury plunges.”

And speaking of theoretical computer model-based warnings, where’s that global warming when we really need it?

California
is in a severe drought as the rainy season never came this year.
With seventeen towns in the state in such dire straits that they may run
out of water within two months, emergency measures are being taken to
avoid drought ghost towns.

The House of Representatives is
considering action to help deal with this emergency by considering a
measure that would provide for alternative ways of protecting the Delta
smelt – a fish that a federal Court has ruled must be protected even at
the cost of the state’s vast food production capacity.

Even
without the current crisis, California already faced a
“government-imposed dust bowl” due to Endangered Species Act
requirements that fresh water be flushed out to sea in an unproven hope
that this would help save the endangered Delta smelt. This
diversion of what long-time Californian’s consider their most precious
resource has already choked large portions of the state’s agricultural
salad bowl.

Now, with the drought worsening and snow packs in the
Sierra Nevada range at critically low levels, it is time to put
partisan wrangling aside and pass legislation that stops the waste of
water while still protecting the fish.

The House of
Representatives is likely to consider HR 3964 in the next two weeks,
which accomplishes this very fete. By focusing upon allowing
fisherman unlimited takes of natural predators of the endangered smelt,
the endangered fish should thrive, allowing the life giving freshwater
that is currently being wasted to be returned to the hundreds of miles
of aquaducts that feed the irrigation systems in the state’s fertile San
Joaquin Valley.

But this is not just a common sense issue, it is
also a life saving one. As small central valley agriculture towns
have suffered with unemployment rates above 40 percent due to the lack
of water to grow crops.

Rebekah Rast, a central California native, reported in NetRightDaily.com on this issue last year writing,

“Agricultural
production in the Central Valley of California accounts for $26 billion
in total sales and 38 percent of the Valley’s labor force.
Farmers in this area grow more than half the nation’s vegetables, fruits
and nuts. In fact, if you buy domestic artichokes, pistachios,
walnuts or almonds, there is about a 99 percent chance that they were
all grown in California.

“But in order for these products to
grow, the Central Valley needs water — and the past few years the
government has been withholding that vital resource.

“Much of
California’s water is pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to
the federally owned Central Valley Project (CVP) and the California
State Water Project (SWP). To understand the size, scope and
capacity of these water systems, with California boasting a population
of roughly 37 million people, these two projects deliver water to more
than 27 million people. The CVP alone provides water to more than
600 family-owned farms, which produce more than 60 high-quality
commercial food and fiber crops sold for the fresh, dry, canned and
frozen food markets.”

Without Congressional action to allow the
water to return to irrigate crops, the current drought puts the
agricultural infrastructure in California at risk. The
consequences of Washington, D.C. failing to pass legislation to stop
dumping the states water into the Pacific Ocean will affect both the
cost and availability for consumers around the nation of the food that
will not be produced.

Now is the time to act before this water
crisis becomes catastrophic for those who lose their jobs working on
farms and for those who consume the food they produce. It is time
for the environmental lobby that has blocked similar measures in the
past to embrace the taking of the Delta smelt predators and allow the
water to flow around the state.

The House of Representatives is expected to take the necessary steps to throw a lifeline to California.

With
two Senators from the San Francisco Bay area, who knows if they will
tell their cocktail party environmentalist friends to stop obstructing
this needed water bill, or if instead they will tell the rest of the
state to pound sand.

The choice seems obvious, but they are San Francisco Bay area liberals, so who knows what they might do?

Great Barrier Reef: Governments say world heritage site not in danger from development

Australia
has argued it is making substantial progress on the United Nations'
requests for better protection of the Great Barrier Reef and that it
should not be listed among world heritage sites "in danger".

In a
progress report to the UN World Heritage Committee, the federal and
Queensland governments say the natural values the reef was protected for
are still largely intact, although in parts - such as inshore areas
south of Cooktown - they are declining.

The report was delivered
to the UN on Saturday, a day after final approval was granted to dump in
the reef's waters 3 million cubic metres of dredging sludge from the
expansion of coal export terminals at Abbot Point.

The World
Heritage Committee has threatened to put the reef on a list of world
heritage sites considered "in danger" after becoming concerned in 2012
about the effect of numerous resource projects slated for the reef's
coast.

Australia needs to show significant progress on UN
recommendations for better reef management to avoid a downgrade. Tourism
operators warn an "in danger" listing will damage the reef's
international reputation and their businesses.

The governments'
report points to several programs to reduce threats, including a
sustainability strategy, water quality measures and a draft Queensland
ports strategy.

Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt said there
was genuine improvement in reef indicators in regard to dugongs,
turtles, seagrass and coral. The Coalition had rejected Labor's multiple
new-port strategy and was containing development to five existing port
areas, he said.

"It is a permanent task for every Australian
government to protect and maintain the reef. Nobody can ever rest on
that, but there should be no way the reef can and should be considered
'in danger'," Mr Hunt said.

Australian Coral Reef Society
president Peter Mumby said many people had argued convincingly that the
reef was in the worst shape since monitoring began. He said the progress
report downplayed industrial development threats, including port and
agriculture expansion, that could add as much as another 14 million
tonnes a year of damaging sediment to reef waters.

University of
Queensland coral reef ecologist Selina Ward said the Abbot Point
decision was dangerous because the best modelling showed dumped sediment
would drift to outer areas, damaging coral and seagrass.

The
government progress report said extreme weather and climate change were
the biggest threats to the reef. It also pointed to nutrient and
sediment run-off from land clearing and agriculture, and associated
spikes in crown-of-thorns starfish numbers.

It said pollution
from other sources, including port development and dredging, "is minor
but may be highly significant locally and over short time periods".

Queensland
Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche said the governments'
progress report had identified the port development impacts as being
minor and temporary.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

4 February, 2014

UK MET OFFICE: GLOBAL TEMPERATURE STANDSTILL CONTINUES

With
none of the fanfare that accompanies their prediction of the global
temperature for the forthcoming year the Met Office has quietly released
the global temperature for 2013. It will come as no surprise after the
2013 temperatures released by NASA and NOAA that it shows the global
temperature standstill – now at 17 years – continues.

The
temperature anomaly (above 14.0 deg C) for 2013 is 0.486 making 2013
the 8th warmest year. Statistically with errors of +/- 0.1 deg C ranking
the warmest years is meaningless, but it seems to be something many
scientists and the media do. So, 2013 is cooler than 2010, 2009, 2006,
2005, 2003, 2002, 1998 and only 0.003 above 2007. Note that the early
part of the 2000s was warmer than the latter part. Four of the five
years between 2002-2006 were warmer than 2013, but only two of the past
seven have been. Note also that 2013 is cooler than 2003.

The
forecast for 2013 made by the Met Office in late 2012 said it would be
between 0.43 and 0.71 deg C with a best estimate of 0.53. Once again the
Met Office predicted the following year would be considerably warmer
than it turned out to be.

There is something seriously wrong with
the Met Office’s forecasts. Consider the assessment given by the Met
Office’s Vicky Pope in 2007.

Vicky Pope: “By 2014 we’re
predicting it will be 0.3 degrees warmer than 2004, and just to put that
into context the warming over the past century and a half has only been
0.7 degrees, globally, there have been bigger changes locally but
globally the warming is 0.7 degrees. So 0.3 degrees over the next ten
years is pretty significant. And half the years after 2009 are predicted
to be hotter than 1998 which was the previous record. So these are very
strong statements about what will happen over the next ten years, so
again I think this illustrates we can already see signs of climate
change but over the next ten years we are expecting to see quite
significant changes occurring.”

This ‘state-of-the-art’ estimate,
and advice to government, could not have been more wrong. 2014 will not
be 0.755 deg C. Only one of the four years since 2009 has been warmer
than 1998, and that by less than 2 hundredths of a deg, again
statistically insignificant.

The Met Office predict that 2014
will have the same range as it did last year – 0.43 – 0.71 deg C but
their new best estimate is 0.57 which will make 2014 the warmest year
ever. It might be possible if 2014 is an El Nino year (the reason why
2010 poked its head marginally above the means of the other years) but
that would prove nothing about global warming, just inter-annual
variations. Many expect 2014 to be an El Nino year.

It is time
some best practice seeped into these temperature datasets, at least as
far as their communication to the public and the media is concerned. If a
pre-university student produced a measurement of 0.486 +/- 0.1 they
would be failed. Global temperatures should be quoted to one significant
figure. This would mean all years since 2001 would be either 0.5 or 0.4
deg C with errors of +/- 0.1.

North
Carolina consumers are paying a steep price for the state’s renewable
power mandates, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration
data. In North Carolina, electricity prices have risen 65 percent faster
than the national average since the state imposed renewable power
mandates in 2007.

Under the 2007 law, investor-owned utilities
must generate 12.5 percent of their electricity from renewable sources
by 2021. Electric co-ops and municipal utilities are required to get 10
percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2018.

Sharply Rising Prices

Since 2007, U.S. electricity prices have risen 10.8 percent, but North Carolina electricity prices have risen 17.8 percent.

Notably,
the increase in North Carolina electricity prices masks an even faster
rise in electricity costs. Federal taxpayers (including North
Carolinians) provide substantial subsidies to renewable power producers,
most notably through the wind power production tax credit. These
additional costs are hidden, and are not reflected in the EIA retail
price data.

Directly Traceable to Renewables

The
increasing generation of costly renewable power directly raises North
Carolina electricity costs. During testimony last year before the Ohio
Senate Public Utilities Committee, Andrew Ott, senior vice president for
markets at the grid operator which which coordinates electricity
transmission in 13 states, testified it costs at least double or triple
as much to deliver wind power to electricity consumers as it does to
deliver conventional power. These renewable power cost premiums apply in
North Carolina and throughout the nation.

Household Finances Hit Hard

The
rapid increase in electricity prices is imposing real financial
hardship on North Carolina families. Had North Carolina electricity
prices risen at merely the national average since 2007, North Carolina
electricity consumers would have saved over $4.2 billion in electricity
costs. Averaged out over North Carolina’s 3.7 million households, the
average North Carolina household has already paid an extra $1,135 in
electricity costs (approximately $190 per household per year) beyond
what each household would have paid if North Carolina electricity prices
rose merely at the same pace as the national average since 2007.

The
cost of holding rising temperatures to safe levels may reach 4 percent
of economic output by 2030, according to a draft United Nations report
designed to influence efforts to draft a global-warming treaty.

Most
scenarios that meet the 2-degree Celsius (3.6-degree Fahrenheit) cap on
global warming endorsed by world leaders require a 40 percent to 70
percent reduction in heat-trapping gases by 2050 from 2010 levels,
according to the third installment of the UN’s biggest-ever study of
climate change. The world would need to triple the share of renewables,
nuclear power and carbon-capture and storage to meet that goal.

“This
report shows that 2 degrees is still technically possible and ought to
remain the primary policy target” for climate negotiations that intend
to produce a global agreement in 2015, said Bob Ward, policy director at
the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
at the London School of Economics.

A draft of the study was
obtained by Bloomberg from a person with access to the documents who
asked not to be identified because it hasn’t been published. A spokesman
for the panel declined to comment on the document.

The research
is important because it’s intended to influence the direction of UN
negotiations involving more than 190 countries on how to combat global
warming. The discussions have been beset by wrangles between developing
and industrialized nations over who should bear the cost of tackling
climate change.

Ocean
researchers working on the coral reefs of Palau in 2011 and 2012 made
two unexpected discoveries that could provide insight into corals'
resistance and resilience to ocean acidification, and aid in the
creation of a plan to protect them.

The
team collected water samples at nine points along a transect that
stretched from the open ocean, across the barrier reef, into the lagoon
and then into the bays and inlets around the Rock Islands of Palau, in
the western Pacific Ocean. With each location they found that the
seawater became increasingly acidic as they moved toward land.

"When
we first plotted up those data, we were shocked," said lead author
Kathryn Shamberger, then a postdoctoral scholar at Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and a chemical oceanographer. "We had
no idea the level of acidification we would find. We're looking at reefs
today that have levels that we expect for the open ocean in that region
by the end of the century."

Shamberger conducted the fieldwork
in Palau with other researchers from the laboratory of WHOI
biogeochemist Anne Cohen as well as scientists from the Palau
International Coral Reef Center (PICRC).

While ocean chemistry
varies naturally at different locations, it is changing around the world
due to increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. The
ocean absorbs atmospheric CO2, which reacts with seawater, lowering its
overall pH, and making it more acidic. This process also removes
carbonate ions needed by corals and other organisms to build their
skeletons and shells. Corals growing in low pH conditions, both in
laboratory experiments that simulate future conditions and in other
naturally low pH ocean environments, show a range of negative impacts.
Impacts can include juveniles having difficulty constructing their
skeletons, fewer varieties of corals, less coral cover, more algae
growth, and more porous corals with greater signs of erosion from other
organisms.

The new research, published in Geophysical Research Letters,
a journal of the American Geophysical Union, explains the natural
biological and geomorphological causes of the more acidic water near
Palau's Rock Islands and describes a surprising second finding – that
the corals living in that more acidic water were unexpectedly diverse
and healthy. The unusual finding, which is contrary to what has been
observed in other naturally low pH coral reef systems, has important
implications for the conservation of corals in all parts of the world.

"When
you move from a high pH reef to a low pH neighboring reef, there are
big changes, and they are negative changes," said Cohen, a co-author on
the paper and lead principal investigaor of the project. "However, in
Palau where the water is most acidic, we see the opposite. We see a
coral community that is more diverse, hosts more species, and has
greater coral cover than in the non-acidic sites. Palau is the exception
to the places scientists have studied."

Through analysis of the
water chemistry in Palau, the scientists found the acidification is
primarily caused by the shell building done by the organisms living in
the water, called calcification, which removes carbonate ions from
seawater. A second reason is the organisms' respiration, which adds CO2
to the water when they breathe.

"These things are all happening
at every reef," said Cohen. "What's really critical here is the
residence time of the sea water."

"In the Rock Islands, the water
sits in the bays for a long time before being flushed out. This is a
big area that's like a maze with lots of channels and inlets for the
water to wind around," explained Shamberger. "Calcification and
respiration are continually happening at these sites while the water
sits there, and it allows the water to become more and more acidic. It's
a little bit like being stuck in a room with a limited amount of oxygen
– the longer you're in there without opening a window, you're using up
oxygen and increasing CO2."

Ordinarily, she added pushing the
analogy, without fresh air coming in, it gets harder and harder for
living things to thrive, "yet in the case of the corals in Palau, we're
finding the opposite. "What we found is that coral cover and coral
diversity actually increase as you move from the outer reefs and into
the Rock Islands, which is exactly the opposite of what we were
expecting."

The scientists' next steps are to determine if these
corals are genetically adapted to low pH or whether Palau provides a
"perfect storm" of environmental conditions that allows these corals to
survive the low pH. "If it's the latter, it means if you took those
corals out of that specific environment and put them in another low pH
environment that doesn't have the same combination of conditions, they
wouldn't be able to survive," said Cohen. "But if they're genetically
adapted to low pH, you could put them anywhere and they could survive."

"These
reef communities have developed under these conditions for thousands of
years," said Shamberger, "and we're talking about conditions that are
going to be occurring in a lot of the rest of the ocean by the end of
the century. We don't know if other coral reefs will be able to adapt to ocean acidification – the time scale might be too short."

The
scientists are careful to stress that their finding in Palau is
different from every other low pH environment that has been studied.
"When we find a reef like Palau where the coral communities are thriving
under low pH, that's an exception," said Cohen. "It doesn't mean coral
reefs around the globe are going to be OK under ocean acidification
conditions. It does mean that there are some coral communities out there
– and we've found one – that appear to have figured it out. But that
doesn't mean all coral reef ecosystems are going to figure it out."

"In
Palau, we have these special and unique places where organisms have
figured out how to survive in an acidified environment. Yet, these
places are much more prone to local human impacts because of their
closeness to land and because of low circulation in these areas," said
co-author Yimnang Golbuu, CEO of the PICRC. "We need to put special
efforts into protecting these places and to ensure that we can
incorporate them into the Protected Areas Network in Palau."

A
sermon below by Corinne Le Quéré, a professor of climate change science
and policy at the notorious University of East Anglia, home of Phil
"hiding the decline" Jones. Queer Corinne claims to be a scientist
but forgets to mention that there has been no climate change for 17
years. So she must be wrong about what she attributes to it.
Something that does not exist cannot cause anything. Whether she
is a scientist or not she is certainly no logician

Sean
Thomas depicts me in his blog as professing a new type of religion
because I speak about climate change and flood risk. His tweet appears
to describe me as a "nutter". Mr Thomas appears to be himself professing
ignorance, something I hardly recommend.

I am a physicist of 20
years' experience, and climate change research is a science, not a
faith. That means it is based on observations and on understanding of
how the world works. It is the same kind of science that provides the
tides, currents and weather forecasts. It’s not perfect science, but
science, and knowing the weather, has taken us a long way in making our
everyday life a lot more comfortable.

Mr Thomas is ignorant of
the fact that heavy precipitation in winter has increased over the past
45 years in all regions of the UK. That’s not just stories told by
people based upon their own experience, it is a lot of data collected
and analysed all over the UK.

Mr Thomas is ignorant of the fact
that that heavy precipitation is an anticipated consequence of a warming
climate in wet regions of the world, such as the UK. It is simple
physics: the planet warms, water evaporates more, more moisture is
available in the atmosphere for individual storms, therefore more heavy
precipitation. Storms are made by the weather, but climate change puts
more moisture into the atmosphere that makes the rainfall heavier.

As
for his ignorance on Arctic melting, Mr Thomas cites one year of data
for his claim. The September ice cover has shrunk by 40 per cent in 30
years. When there is no ice, seawater evaporates and loads the
atmosphere with moisture, which affects the weather patterns. A look at a
map shows that the UK is close to the Arctic, and the possibility that
changes in the Arctic might play a role in the weather that we are
experiencing in the UK and elsewhere. Mr Thomas takes science and data
very lightly.

What is harder to detect is the exact contribution
of climate change to extreme weather when it occurs. Bad weather has
always been around and “extreme” is a relative term. The techniques
required to detect the role of climate change in extreme weather are at
an early stage of development, and we don’t yet have the capacity to
apply them while weather events occur. If UK science had that capacity
then it would help alleviate Mr Thomas’s ignorance over the difference
between weather, climate and belief. It would also help put a cost to
the risks we are taking by changing the climate.

Mr Thomas refers
to the “eerie and echoing syntax” and “the faintly theological tones of
the estimable Professor Corinne Le Quéré” – but the only faintly
theological tones here are made up by Mr Thomas’ livelihood as a writer
of religious fiction. His fatalistic belief that data and independent
evidence is of no value, and that climate change is all in the mind of
the thousands of scientists specialising in the topic, is ignorant and
foolish.

While Mr Thomas might believe that it is all in the
hand of god, science attributes manmade climate change to man, and
coping with and limiting the consequences is in our hands.

By
Garth Paltridge, emeritus professor at the University of Tasmania and a
fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. He is the author of "The
Climate Caper: Facts and Fallacies of Global Warming". He was a chief
research scientist with the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research

Virtually
all scientists directly involved in climate prediction are aware of the
enormous uncertainties associated with their product. How is it that
they can place hands over hearts and swear that human emissions of
carbon dioxide are wrecking the planet?

The World Meteorological
Organisation of the United Nations took its first steps towards
establishing the World Climate Program in the early 1970s. Among other
things it held a conference in Stockholm to define the main scientific
problems to be solved before reliable climate forecasting could be
possible. The conference defined quite a number, but focused on just
two.

The first concerned an inability to simulate the amount and
character of clouds in the atmosphere. Clouds are important because they
govern the balance between solar heating and infrared cooling of the
planet, and thereby are a control of Earth’s temperature. The second
concerned an inability to forecast the behaviour of oceans. Oceans are
important because they are the main reservoirs of heat in the climate
system. They have internal, more-or-less random, fluctuations on all
sorts of time-scales ranging from years through to centuries. These
fluctuations cause changes in ocean surface temperature that in turn
affect Earth’s overall climate.

The situation hasn’t changed much
in the decades since. Many of the problems of simulating the behaviour
of clouds and oceans are still there (along with lots of other problems
of lesser moment) and for many of the same reasons. Perhaps the most
significant is that climate models must do their calculations at each
point of an imaginary grid of points spread evenly around the world at
various heights in the atmosphere and depths in the ocean. The
calculations are done every hour or so of model time as the model steps
forward into its theoretical future. Problems arise because practical
constraints on the size of computers ensure that the horizontal distance
between model grid-points may be as much as a degree or two of latitude
or longitude—that is to say, a distance of many tens of kilometres.

That
sort of distance is much larger than the size of a typical piece of
cloud. As a consequence, simulation of clouds requires a fair amount of
guesswork as to what might be a suitable average of whatever is going on
between the grid-points of the model. Even if experimental observations
suggest that the models get the averages roughly right for a short-term
forecast, there is no guarantee they will get them right for
atmospheric conditions several decades into the future. Among other
problems, small errors in the numerical modelling of complex processes
have a nasty habit of accumulating with time.

Again because of
this grid-point business, oceanic fluctuations and eddies smaller than
the distance between the grid-points of a model are unknown to that
model. This would not be a problem except that eddies in turbulent
fluids can grow larger and larger. A small random eddy in the real ocean
can grow and appear out of nowhere as far as a forecasting model is
concerned, and make a dog’s breakfast of the forecast from that time on.

All
of the above is background to one of the great mysteries of the climate
change issue. Virtually all the scientists directly involved in climate
prediction are aware of the enormous problems and uncertainties still
associated with their product. How then is it that those of them
involved in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) can put their hands on their hearts and maintain there is a
95 per cent probability that human emissions of carbon dioxide have
caused most of the global warming that has occurred over the last
several decades?

Bear in mind that the representation of clouds
in climate models (and of water vapour, which is intimately involved
with cloud formation) is such as to amplify the forecast warming from
increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide—on average over most of the
models—by a factor of about three. In other words, two-thirds of the
forecast rise in temperature derives from this particular model
characteristic. Despite what the models are telling us—and perhaps
because it is models that are telling us—no scientist close to the
problem and in his right mind, when asked the specific question, would
say that he is 95 per cent sure that the effect of clouds is to amplify
rather than to reduce the warming effect of increasing carbon dioxide.
If he is not sure that clouds amplify global warming, he cannot be sure
that most of the global warming is a result of increasing carbon
dioxide.

Bear in mind too that no scientist close to the problem
and in his right mind, when asked the specific question, would say there
is only a very small possibility (that is, less than 5 per cent) that
internal ocean behaviour could be a major cause of the warming over the
past half-century. He would be particularly careful not to make such a
statement now that there has been no significant warming over the most
recent fifteen or so years. In the mad scurry to find reasons for the
pause, and to find reasons for an obvious failure of the models to
simulate the pause, suddenly we are hearing that perhaps the heat of
global warming is being “hidden” in the deep ocean. In other words we
are being told that some internal oceanic fluctuation may have reduced
the upward trend in global temperature. It is therefore more than a
little strange that we are not hearing from the IPCC (or at any rate not
hearing very loudly) that some natural internal fluctuation of the
system may have given rise to most of the earlier upward trend.

In
the light of all this, we have at least to consider the possibility
that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has
been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate
problem—or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the
uncertainties associated with the climate problem—in its effort to
promote the cause. It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of
science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the
unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis of
society’s respect for scientific endeavour. Trading reputational capital
for short-term political gain isn’t the most sensible way of going
about things.

The trap was set in the late 1970s or thereabouts
when the environmental movement first realised that doing something
about global warming would play to quite a number of its social agendas.
At much the same time, it became accepted wisdom around the corridors
of power that government-funded scientists (that is, most scientists)
should be required to obtain a goodly fraction of their funds and
salaries from external sources—external anyway to their own particular
organisation.

The scientists in environmental research
laboratories, since they are not normally linked to any particular
private industry, were forced to seek funds from other government
departments. In turn this forced them to accept the need for advocacy
and for the manipulation of public opinion. For that sort of activity,
an arm’s-length association with the environmental movement would be a
union made in heaven. Among other things it would provide a means by
which scientists could distance themselves from responsibility for any
public overstatement of the significance of their particular research
problem.

The trap was partially sprung in climate research when a
number of the relevant scientists began to enjoy the advocacy business.
The enjoyment was based on a considerable increase in funding and
employment opportunity. The increase was not so much on the hard-science
side of things but rather in the emerging fringe institutes and
organisations devoted, at least in part, to selling the message of
climatic doom. A new and rewarding research lifestyle emerged which
involved the giving of advice to all types and levels of government, the
broadcasting of unchallengeable opinion to the general public, and easy
justification for attendance at international conferences—this last in
some luxury by normal scientific experience, and at a frequency
previously unheard of.

Somewhere along the line it came to be
believed by many of the public, and indeed by many of the scientists
themselves, that climate researchers were the equivalent of knights on
white steeds fighting a great battle against the forces of evil—evil,
that is, in the shape of “big oil” and its supposedly unlimited money.
The delusion was more than a little attractive.

The trap was
fully sprung when many of the world’s major national academies of
science (such as the Royal Society in the UK, the National Academy of
Sciences in the USA and the Australian Academy of Science) persuaded
themselves to issue reports giving support to the conclusions of the
IPCC. The reports were touted as national assessments that were
supposedly independent of the IPCC and of each other, but of necessity
were compiled with the assistance of, and in some cases at the behest
of, many of the scientists involved in the IPCC international
machinations. In effect, the academies, which are the most prestigious
of the institutions of science, formally nailed their colours to the
mast of the politically correct.

Since that time three or four
years ago, there has been no comfortable way for the scientific
community to raise the spectre of serious uncertainty about the
forecasts of climatic disaster. It can no longer use the environmental
movement as a scapegoat if it should turn out that the threat of global
warming has no real substance. It can no longer escape prime
responsibility if it should turn out in the end that doing something in
the name of mitigation of global warming is the costliest scientific
mistake ever visited on humanity. The current redirection of global
funds in the name of climate change is of the order of a billion dollars
a day. And in the future, to quote US Senator Everett Dirksen, “a
billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon we’ll be talking about
real money”.

At the same time, the average man in the street, a
sensible chap who by now can smell the signs of an oversold
environmental campaign from miles away, is beginning to suspect that it
is politics rather than science which is driving the issue.

Scientists—most
scientists anyway—may be a bit naive, but they are not generally
wicked, idiotic, or easily suborned either by money or by the
politically correct. So whatever might be the enjoyment factor
associated with supporting officially accepted wisdom, and whatever
might be the constraints applied by the scientific powers-that-be, it is
still surprising that the latest IPCC report has been tabled with
almost no murmur of discontent from the lower levels of the research
establishment. What has happened to the scepticism that is supposedly
the lifeblood of scientific inquiry?

The answer probably gets
back to the uncertainty of it all. The chances of proving that climate
change over the next century will be large enough to be disastrous are
virtually nil. For the same reason, the chances of a climate sceptic, or
anyone else for that matter, proving the disaster theory to be oversold
are also virtually nil. To that extent there is a level playing field
for the two sides of the argument. The problem is that climate research
necessarily involves enormous resources, and is a game for institutions
and organisations. Scepticism is an occupation for individuals. Things
being as they are in the climate-change arena, scepticism by an
individual within the system can be fairly career-limiting. In any
event, most individual scientists have a conscience, and are reluctant
to put their heads above the public parapet in order to propound a view
of things that may be inherently unprovable.

In short, there is
more than enough uncertainty about the forecasting of climate to allow
normal human beings to be at least reasonably hopeful that global
warming might not be nearly as bad as is currently touted. Climate
scientists, and indeed scientists in general, are not so lucky. They
have a lot to lose if time should prove them wrong.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

3 February, 2014

Scientific Pride and Prejudice

The
article below by MICHAEL SUK-YOUNG CHWE discusses the biases common in
science. I also append after it a comment by Martin Herzberg that
points out the relevance of such biases to Warmism. I actually
don't think there is much relevance to Warmism because Warmism has long
gone from being science to being a political creed. The studies Mr
Chwe discusses are rigorous compared with the rank speculation that is
Warmism

SCIENCE is in crisis, just when we need it most. Two
years ago, C. Glenn Begley and Lee M. Ellis reported in Nature that they
were able to replicate only six out of 53 "landmark" cancer studies.
Scientists now worry that many published scientific results are simply
not true. The natural sciences often offer themselves as a model to
other disciplines. But this time science might look for help to the
humanities, and to literary criticism in particular.

A major root
of the crisis is selective use of data. Scientists, eager to make
striking new claims, focus only on evidence that supports their
preconceptions. Psychologists call this "confirmation bias": We seek out
information that confirms what we already believe. "We each begin
probably with a little bias," as Jane Austen writes in "Persuasion,"
"and upon that bias build every circumstance in favor of it."

Despite
the popular belief that anything goes in literary criticism, the field
has real standards of scholarly validity. In his 1967 book "Validity in
Interpretation," E. D. Hirsch writes that "an interpretive hypothesis,"
about a poem "is ultimately a probability judgment that is supported by
evidence." This is akin to the statistical approach used in the
sciences; Mr. Hirsch was strongly influenced by John Maynard Keynes's "A
Treatise on Probability."

However, Mr. Hirsch also finds that
"every interpreter labors under the handicap of an inevitable
circularity: All his internal evidence tends to support his hypothesis
because much of it was constituted by his hypothesis." This is
essentially the problem faced by science today. According to Mr. Begley
and Mr. Ellis's report in Nature, some of the nonreproducible "landmark"
studies inspired hundreds of new studies that tried to extend the
original result without verifying if the original result was true. A
claim is not likely to be disproved by an experiment that takes that
claim as its starting point. Mr. Hirsch warns about falling "victim to
the self-confirmability of interpretations."

It's a danger the
humanities have long been aware of. In his 1960 book "Truth and Method,"
the influential German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer argues that an
interpreter of a text must first question "the validity - of the
fore-meanings dwelling within him." However, "this kind of sensitivity
involves neither `neutrality' with respect to content nor the extinction
of one's self." Rather, "the important thing is to be aware of one's
own bias." To deal with the problem of selective use of data, the
scientific community must become self-aware and realize that it has a
problem. In literary criticism, the question of how one's arguments are
influenced by one's prejudgments has been a central methodological issue
for decades.

Sometimes prejudgments are hard to resist. In
December 2010, for example, NASA-funded researchers, perhaps eager to
generate public excitement for new forms of life, reported the existence
of a bacterium that used arsenic instead of phosphorus in its DNA.
Later, this study was found to have major errors. Even if such
influences don't affect one's research results, we should at least be
able to admit that they are possible.

Austen might say that
researchers should emulate Mr. Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice," who
submits, "I will venture to say that my investigations and decisions are
not usually influenced by my hopes and fears." At least Mr. Darcy
acknowledges the possibility that his personal feelings might influence
his investigations.

But it would be wrong to say that the ideal
scholar is somehow unbiased or dispassionate. In my freshman physics
class at Caltech, David Goodstein, who later became vice provost of the
university, showed us Robert Millikan's lab notebooks for his famed 1909
oil drop experiment with Harvey Fletcher, which first established the
electric charge of the electron.

The notebooks showed many fits
and starts and many "results" that were obviously wrong, but as they
progressed, the results got cleaner, and Millikan could not help but
include comments such as "Best yet - Beauty - Publish." In other words,
Millikan excluded the data that seemed erroneous and included data that
he liked, embracing his own confirmation bias.

Mr. Goodstein's
point was that the textbook "scientific method" of dispassionately
testing a hypothesis is not how science really works. We often have a
clear idea of what we want the results to be before we run an
experiment. We freshman physics students found this a bit hard to take.
What Mr. Goodstein was trying to teach us was that science as a lived,
human process is different from our preconception of it. He was trying
to give us a glimpse of self-understanding, a moment of self-doubt.

When
I began to read the novels of Jane Austen, I became convinced that
Austen, by placing sophisticated characters in challenging, complex
situations, was trying to explicitly analyze how people acted
strategically. There was no fancy name for this kind of analysis in
Austen's time, but today we call it game theory. I believe that Austen
anticipated the main ideas of game theory by more than a century.

As
a game theorist myself, how do I know I am not imposing my own way of
thinking on Austen? I present lots of evidence to back up my claim, but I
cannot deny my own preconceptions and training. As Mr. Gadamer writes, a
researcher "cannot separate in advance the productive prejudices that
enable understanding from the prejudices that hinder it." We all bring
different preconceptions to our inquiries, whether about Austen or the
electron, and these preconceptions can spur as well as blind us.

Perhaps
because of its self-awareness about what Austen would call the "whims
and caprices" of human reasoning, the field of psychology has been most
aggressive in dealing with doubts about the validity of its research. In
an open email in September 2012 to fellow psychologists, the Nobel
laureate Daniel Kahneman suggests that "to deal effectively with the
doubts you should acknowledge their existence and confront them straight
on, because a posture of defiant denial is self-defeating." Everyone,
including natural scientists, social scientists and humanists, could use
a little more self-awareness. Understanding science as fundamentally a
human process might be necessary to save science itself.

`The
above article by Michael Suk-Young Chwe is one of the finest I have
read for years in the Times. Science is indeed "in crisis" because
of the "selective use of data" because of the "confirmation bias"
whereby "we seek out information that confirms what we already believe."
Unfortunately, he neglects to mention the most egregious example: the
"global warming / climate change" theory that attributes changes in
weather to human emission of CO2. There is not one iota of reliable
evidence for that theory, yet it has been accepted by many scientific
organizations, government agencies, mainstream media (including the
Times) and even President Obama: all because of their biases, and their
complete absence of self doubt. As a result, billions of dollars are
being wasted in the pursuit of the phantom in the sky: the so-called
"greenhouse effect" - a pure fiction.

Only one
disagreement with Mr. Chwe: Milliken's oil drop experiment was
complicated because of the difficulty in measuring the mass of his oil
drops by balancing the gravitational force against the drag force when
the droplets reached terminal velocity in the absence of an electric
field. Once that mass was determined, and a balance was achieved in the
presence of balanced electric and gravitational forces, the electric
charges on the droplets were all found to be multiples of the
fundamental charge of the electron. Milliken's early difficulties had
nothing to do with his "confirmation bias" but only with the difficulty
of an indirect and complex determination of the droplet's masses.

Martin Herzberg -- Via email

EPA Administrator on `Destroyed Ozone Layer' - `We Are Fixing That'

Speaking
at the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE)
conference on Thursday in Arlington, Va., Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy said her agency is "fixing" the
damaged ozone layer.

"From keeping our air clean and our water
clean to combating climate change, science has always been and will
always be at the heart of the mission of the United States Environmental
Protection Agency," McCarthy said.

According to an April 26,
2007 report from the EPA, the banning of the chemicals thought to damage
the ozone layer between the Earth and the sun were no longer being
produced in the United States.

"Countries around the world are
phasing out the production and use of chemicals that destroy ozone in
the Earth's upper atmosphere," the report stated. "The United States has
already phased out production of those substances having the greatest
potential to deplete the ozone layer."

Actions to "fix" the ozone
layer date back to 1989 with the creation of United Nations-backed
Montreal Protocol, which called on countries to stop using the chemicals
some scientists said were depleting it. The United States is one of the
countries to sign on to the Protocol, which was amended in 1991, 1993,
1996, 1998, 2000 and 2008, according to the U.N.

The NCSE
conference described its mission in the program this way: "The 14th
National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy and the
Environment: Building Climate Solutions will engage some 1,000 key
individuals from any fields of sciences and engineering, government and
policy, business and civil society to advance solutions to minimize the
causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate change."

Lord Smith's leadership of the Environment Agency is in crisis following the flooding gripping parts of Britain.

Sources
have accused Lord Smith, a Cabinet minister in Tony Blair's Labour
government, of "keeping his head down" despite parts of the country
being submerged for weeks.

Allegations that he is "too
distracted" by having too many jobs - in all Lord Smith has 11 paid and
unpaid posts - have added to the growing concern in Whitehall.

Although
he is due to step down as chairman of the Environment Agency in June, a
source said: "There is no way he would get back in even if he wanted to
reapply for his post."

Lord Smith has insisted the agency is
doing all it can in the face of the wettest January in history and has
pointed out that - unlike the North Sea floods of 1953 when more than
300 people died - lives have been protected through the hard work of his
staff.

However, the agency has faced severe criticism,
particularly over its alleged failure to dredge rivers on the Somerset
Levels. One local MP accused the body of failing to spend its resources
on flood defences and instead diverting millions of pounds to bird
sanctuaries.

Ian Liddell-Grainger, MP for Bridgwater in Somerset,
said: "We're just sick to death of it [flooding]. They [the Environment
Agency] need to dredge these rivers, stop spending money - £31 million -
on bird sanctuaries and spend £5 million, that's all we want, to sort
this out.

"What comes first is the humans. I'm afraid the birds will fly off elsewhere."

The
Telegraph can also disclose that the Environment Agency undertook
detailed computer modelling on the impact of dredging in 2012, which
showed that dredging would have "significantly reduce[d] the duration
and depth of flooding" in the worst hit areas.

Residents of the
Somerset Levels piled further pressure on the agency after tests showed
stagnant flood water had left gardens "awash with unsafe bacteria".

Tests
by microbiologists from the University of Reading in Moorlands,
Somerset, showed 60,000 to 70,000 bacteria per 100 millilitres. The
World Health Organisation states agricultural water should have no more
than 1,000 bacteria per 100 millilitres. Experts said it would take up
to three months for bacteria levels to fall within safe limits.

"It's
unsurprising considering there are septic tanks in these people's
gardens that are overflowing and animals within close proximity," said
Nathaniel Storey, the microbiologist who carried out the research, "All
this excrement in these areas is being dredged up by the floodwater and
taken into houses and into gardens."

Gavin Sadler, 35, who lives
in Moorlands in Somerset, said: "We've been told children shouldn't go
in any of the areas for two months after the water has gone . The guys
on the ground for the Environment Agency have been great. But some
questions ought to be asked about at management level. Where was the
help weeks ago?"

On Saturday, the Environment Agency issued five
severe flood warnings - in Cornwall and in areas around the Severn River
- and 147 flood warnings and 289 flood alerts as a combination of high
tides, torrential rain and gale force winds battered Britain. A severe
flood warning is only issued if lives are in danger.

Significant
disruption is predicted over the next 24 hours for much of the coast of
Wales and south-west England from Flintshire to Dorset.

This
includes coasts and tidal areas of Dorset, Somerset, Bristol,
Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire. Parts of south-east England,
the North West and the Yorkshire and Hull coast were also facing the
cumulative effects of wind, rain and high tides over the weekend.

The military remained on standby last night in Somerset, where the village of Muchelney has been cut off for a month.

New spending on flood defence schemes will be announced this week with resources likely to be targeted at the hardest-hit areas.

Owen
Paterson, the Environment Secretary, chaired a meeting of the Cobra
emergencies committee yesterday in an attempt to get to grips with the
crisis. He was criticised last week for wearing a suit and shoes to
flood-hit areas rather than appropriate footwear and clothing. Aides
said he had rushed to the scene.

Cobra was told that 20 properties remained flooded in the Somerset Levels amid suggestions the worst may be over.

But
there was further exasperation after allegations that Somerset county
council had failed to dip into a £24 million contingency fund available
for local flood victims. On Saturday, David Cameron, writing in the
Western Daily Press, appeared to criticise the response to the flooding.
He said: "It is not acceptable for people to have to live like this
almost four weeks later - and I am not ruling out any option to get this
problem sorted out."

An Environment Agency spokesman said last
night: "Chris Smith has done a brilliant job as chairman. But he can
only serve two terms as chairman and his second term is coming to an
end. There just isn't the option to have him any longer." She added that
the agency was working around the clock to alleviate difficulties
caused by heavy rainfall.

Gina
McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
asked scientists at a climate change conference on Thursday in
Arlington, Va., to explain the science of climate change.

She also said that the EPA looks at climate change as an opportunity to grow the economy and create jobs.

"Scientists,
you folks help us understand our world," McCarthy said at the 14th
National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy and the
Environment: Building Climate Solutions, sponsored by the National
Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE). "You help EPA to meet
our mission of public health protection and environmental protection.

"I
need you now more than ever to speak the truth," McCarthy said. "I need
you to stand up together with us and explain what the science is
telling you.

"To tell people that science and technology
improvements will allow us to take action moving forward that meets the
needs of this president as he has charged EPA, which is to look at
climate change as something where we can innovate and we can move
forward to grow the economy, to grow jobs, to understand how we're
producing sustainable, livable communities," McCarthy said.

Obama has said he will use executive authority to move forward his agenda, including climate change.

Obama referenced climate change in his State of the Union address while talking about "cleaner energy."

"The
shift to a cleaner energy economy won't happen overnight, and it will
require tough choices along the way," Obama said. "But the debate is
settled. Climate change is a fact.

"And when our children's
children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave
them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us
to be able to say yes, we did," Obama said.

"President
Obama has announced that he will work with Congress whenever he can but
will not be held hostage - will move forward and do the utmost, we
hope, through executive authority and through the agencies," Saundry
said. The Supreme Court has noted that EPA has authority under (the)
Clean Air Act and also other authorities, under (the) Clean Water Act,
and so EPA is marching forward and taking actions right now which is
really, really important."

The conference described its mission
in the program this way: "The 14th National Conference and Global Forum
on Science, Policy and the Environment: Building Climate Solutions will
engage some 1,000 key individuals from any fields of sciences and
engineering, government and policy, business and civil society to
advance solutions to minimize the causes and consequences of
anthropogenic climate change."

KXL was AWOL from SOTU - along with real energy, job, economic and revenue solutions

Paul Driessen

President
Obama frequently says he wants to turn the economy around, put America
back to work, produce more energy, improve public safety, and open new
markets to goods stamped "Made in the USA." In his State of the Union
address he said, if congressional inaction continues, "I will act on my
own to slash bureaucracy and streamline the permitting process for key
projects, so we can get more construction workers on the job as fast as
possible."

Unfortunately, like Arafat, he never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to do all these things.

Most
Americans are no longer fooled by empty hope and change hype. In
December only 74,000 jobs were created (many of them low-paying
part-time seasonal positions), while 374,000 more people gave up looking
for work. Not surprisingly, recent polls have found that three-quarters
of Americans say the country still appears to be in a recession,
two-thirds don't trust the President to make the right decisions for the
country, and barely 30% say the nation is "heading in the right
direction."

The President needs to use his pen and phone to free
our energy, economy and entrepreneurial instincts. But ANWR, OCS, HF,
KXL and other solutions were AWOL from the SOTU. They were sacrificed on
the CO2 and CMGW altar, by the POTUS, EPA, DOI and DOE, in obeisance to
the EDF, NRDC, other environmentalist pressure groups, and assorted
unelected, unaccountable, unconstitutional autocrats.

(Don't you
love Washington-speak - from the land of acronyms, that pricey patch of
real estate on the banks of the Potomac River, bordered by reality and
places where people actually work to earn a living, despite presidents
and hordes of legislators and regulators doing their level best to make
that difficult. For those whose Wash-speak is as bad as their Spanish
and German, translations are provided below.)*

Our nation is
blessed with vast energy, metallic, mineral, forest and other resources,
waiting to be tapped. But they are locked up in favor of
crony-capitalist, eco-unfriendly, land-hungry, subsidy-dependent,
nigh-useless pseudo-alternatives that are dearly beloved by utopian
environmentalists - and by politicians hungry for campaign contributions
from businesses that they repay with billions in other people's money,
taken from taxpayers at the point of an IRS gun to prop up renewable
energy schemes.

Our hydrocarbon wealth especially offers amazing
benefits: improved human safety, health, welfare and living standards,
in a more stable world, with new sources of jobs, wealth and income
equality. Not tapping these resources is contrary to Obama's promises
and our national interest. It is immoral.

Of all the
opportunities arrayed before him, the 1,179-mile Alberta to Texas
Keystone XL pipeline (KXL) is the most "shovel ready." Indeed, it awaits
merely a presidential phone call or signature, to slash bureaucratic
red tape, streamline the permitting process, and create construction and
manufacturing jobs. Some 40,000 jobs in fact - more than half as many
as were created nationwide last December.

As I have pointed out
before (here, here, here and here), there are compelling reasons why the
President should end this interminable six-years-and-counting dilatory
KXL review process - right now.

Jobs. KXL would create an
estimated 20,000 construction jobs; another 10,000 in factories that
make the steel, pipelines, valves, cement and equipment needed to build
the pipeline; thousands more in hotel, restaurant and other support
industries; and still more jobs in the Canadian, North Dakota and other
oil fields whose output would be transported by the pipeline to
refineries and petrochemical plants where still more workers would be
employed. With Mr. Obama and his EPA waging war on communities and
states that mine and use coal, these jobs are even more important to
blue-collar workers in Middle America.

Revenue. States along the
pipeline route would receive $5 billion in new property tax revenues,
and still more in workers' income tax payments. Federal coffers would
also realize hefty gains.

Safety. Right now most of the oil from
Canada's oil sands and North Dakota's Bakken shale deposits moves by
railroad and truck fuel tanks, often through populated areas. Truck and
rail accidents have forced towns to evacuate and even killed 50 people
in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. Corporate executives and federal regulators are
working to improve tanker designs and reroute traffic. But even despite
occasional accidents, pipelines have a much better safety record. KXL
would be built with state-of-the-art pipe, valves and other components,
to the latest design, manufacturing, construction and inspection
specifications. It has been configured to avoid population centers,
sensitive wildlife areas and the Ogallala Aquifer.

Resource
conservation and energy needs. Building Keystone will help ensure that
vast petroleum resources can be efficiently utilized to meet consumer
needs. In conjunction with other pipelines, it will greatly reduce the
need to flare (burn and waste) natural gas that is a byproduct of oil
production in Bakken shale country. The pipelines will also help get
propane and natural gas to places that need these fuels. Recent pipeline
problems, plus unusually high demands for propane to convert corn to
ethanol, created soaring prices and shortages amid one of the nastiest
North American cold spells in decades.

KXL will also enable state
and private lands to continue contributing to America's hydrocarbon
renaissance. That is especially important in the face of congressional
and Obama Administration refusals to open more federal onshore and
offshore oil and gas prospects in Alaska and the Lower 48 States.

US-Canadian
relations. The endless dithering over KXL has frayed relations between
Canada and the United States. It has compelled the Canadians to take
decisive steps toward building new pipelines from the Alberta oil sands
fields to Superior, Wisconsin . and to Canada's west coast, for shipment
to Asia's growing economies. Further delays will not reduce oil sands
development - only the oil's destination.

Climate change. In his
SOTU speech, President Obama informed us that "climate change is a
fact." Well, duh. It's been a fact since Earth was formed. The only
pertinent issues are these: Are humans causing imminent, unprecedented
climate change disasters? And can we control Earth's climate, by
drastically curtailing hydrocarbon use, slashing living standards and
switching to renewables?

No evidence supports either proposition.
Moreover, oil sands production would add a minuscule 0.06% to US
greenhouse gas emissions, a tiny fraction of that amount to global
carbon dioxide emissions, and an undetectable 0.00002 deg F (0.00001 C)
per year to useless computer-model scenarios for global warming.

A
January 24 letter spearheaded by Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) and signed
by all 45 Republican Senators notes many of these points and requests
that President Obama permit KXL pipeline construction "as soon as
possible." Several Democrats told Hoeven privately that they support his
effort and Keystone, but are nervous about challenging the President or
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid publicly.

On January 31, the
State Department reaffirmed its previous conclusions that KXL is
unlikely to noticeably increase demand for Canadian oil sands or global
emissions of carbon dioxide. With reelection behind him, the President
has "greater flexibility" and doesn't need to kowtow to his radical
green base. By picking up his pen and phone, cutting off another
year-long study of whether Keystone is "in the national interest," and
approving the pipeline, he could satisfy independents and his union
base. He'd even reduce CO2 emissions, which State says would be 28-42%
higher if Canada's oil is shipped via train or truck, instead of through
the pipeline. Democrats are urging unemployed workers to lobby
Republicans for extended benefits. They should instead lobby Democrats
and the President to do what's right for America: create the jobs they
promised, by approving Keystone - along with drilling, fracking, mining,
and reduced taxes and regulations.

America is waiting. Will there finally be real hope and change? Or just more hype and empty rhetoric?

Via email

Greenie shark lovers in Australia

People have never been a Greenie priority

Anthony
Joyce once shared the Western Australian government's views on sharks
after he found his foot in the jaws of one while surfing.

But the
surfer from Sydney's northern beaches, who was pulled on to the beach
at Narrabeen last October bleeding profusely from a wound lined with
puncture marks, has done what says is a "180" on his initial support for
the culling of sharks over three metres.

"The amount of sharks they are going to kill is going to make no difference in the scheme of things," he said.

Mr
Joyce said, since undertaking three months of research that included
talking to shark experts and marine biologists, he now supports greater
government support for marine biology programs and shark education in
schools and through surf lifesaving.

Mr Joyce, who took three months to enter the water again after his shark bite, soon hopes to get back on his board.

He
was one of thousands of people gathered on Manly Beach on Saturday to
protest against WA's shark culling policy. The policy, introduced after a
fatal attack off Gracetown in November, intends to target tiger, bull
and great white sharks longer than three metres that come within a
kilometre of the shore.

The Manly rally was one of many held
around Australia and New Zealand. Witty signs, foam shark fins and
chants of "stop the cull" filled the idyllic beach.

Among the
protesters was James Cook, a 27-year-old who said he was more likely to
be king hit than attacked by a shark. His mother, Katherine Cook, was
equally outraged at Australia's desire to kill the marine animals.
"I'm really angry and incensed that we can't co-exist with anything,"
she said. "We are going into their [sharks'] environment. Why can't we
co-exist?"

She said more people died across the world each year from being hit by coconuts than shark attacks.

Thousands of Western Australians also rallied at Perth's Cottesloe Beach, calling for an end to the state government's policy.

The
protest came hours after an under-size two-metre shark, believed to be a
tiger shark, was pulled from a baited drumline off Leighton beach by
Fisheries officers. The animal - the second to be killed under the
program - was dumped further offshore.

The first rally at
Cottesloe - the home suburb of WA Premier Colin Barnett - on January 4
drew an estimated 4500 protesters while the event on Saturday attracted
about 6000 people, with speakers including Greens leader Christine Milne
and state Labor leader Mark McGowan.

``Rights, rights, rights
for great whites,'' the crowd chanted. One placard read: ``Sharks are
more important than human recreation''.

The Liberal-led
government believes a string of fatal attacks in WA waters in recent
years has dented tourism, particularly the diving industry and says
beachgoers must be protected.

But Virgin Airlines boss Sir
Richard Branson, who is fighting China's shark fin trade, told the local
Fairfax radio station on Friday that the catch-and-kill policy would
backfire, driving away tourism.

Mr Barnett, who is in Africa for a
mining conference, has come under immense pressure to call off the
cull, including having the windows of his Cottesloe office smashed by a
protester.

The baited drumlines are scheduled to remain in metropolitan and South West waters until April 30.

WA
shark expert Paul Sharp said the baited drum lines might actually
increase the risk of shark attacks. "Simply having those baits in
the water will result in excited and stimulated sharks," he said at the
Manly protest on Saturday. "Like any other animal, when they are
excited, there is a greater risk of an accident happening."

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

2 February, 2014

Who Cares What Prince Charles Says?

He talks to plants and supports quack medicine so he may not be the sort of guy you want on your side

Recently
it was reported that Prince Charles took a shot at 'climate deniers',
claiming it's "baffling ... that in our modern world we have such blind
trust in science and technology that we all accept what science tells us
about everything - until, that is, it comes to climate science." He
went on to call these presumably "powerful groups of deniers" of
mounting "a barrage of sheer intimidation" against opponents, calling
them a 'headless chicken brigade'.

First of all, I would like to
know exactly what "climate science" he's referring to - the fraudlent
claims and speculations by warmers - or the real world climate being
reported on by the "headless chicken brigade?

Second,
there is no one who knows anything about science who has a 'blind trust
in science and technology'. Only the ignorant and foolish accept
that premise.

Third, if we accept his basic premise it
would mean an abandonment of all that makes science possible, a large
successful industrial society. Does anyone besides me detect a bit
of cognitive dissonance in the Prince? Well, actually no.

The
green movement, a secular religion, will use any argument to promote
its goals, including name calling, intimidation, irrational logic,
emotional appeals and then blames the other side for doing it. The
Prince is the perfect greenie. Arrogant, self righteous, detached
from reality and the consequences of green policies, presents arguments
full of logical fallacies, corrupt in his thinking, and living a life
style he claims is destroying the world.

Finally, the "sheer
intimidation" in all this Anthropogenic Global Warming nonsense came
from the warmers, with the support of powerful government entities, who
allotted 'acceptable climate scientists' grants to the tune of billions
of dollars and were behind efforts to take grants away from those who
didn't go along with “acceptable warming science”. In effect, the
actions amongst warmists in science and government became a practice of
modern ‘Lysenkoism'!

I was once told by an Australian
correspondent not to beat up on the Prince because he’s a good guy being
misled by advisers. Well, that may be true, but since he embraces
all sorts of greenie idiocy it would appear to me he is doing the
leading and hand picking advisors that agree with him. It further
seems to me the Prince lives in an echo chamber of self congratulatory
head nodders.

Let’s face it, would anyone really care what this
man thinks or says if he wasn’t to be the next King of
England? Would he be allowed to get away with the comments
he makes if he wasn’t to be the next King of England? Do we really
believe he wouldn’t be challenged to a public debate on what he calls
‘climate science’, if he wasn’t to be the next King of England?
Why does a man, that will be the next King of England, continue of
defend ‘climate science’ that has made all sorts of predictions which
are proving wrong?

Charles has access to the best
information available in the world, and yet he ignores what is going on
in reality and accepts greenie speculations and claims that are not only
proving false, but shown to be deliberately fraudulent.

My
question to the Prince would be – presuming anyone would be allowed to
ask him any questions that requires him to think on his feet – why he
accepts predictions that are failing versus predictions from a
climatologist [Donn Easterbrook] who’s predictions from 1999 are proving
to be spot on saying, “the PDO [Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a natural
cycle that fluctuates between warm and cold phases] said we're due for a
climate change,”.

He claimed, “It looks as though we're
going to be entering a period of about three decades or so of global
cooling.” Was his prediction right? Yes, he went on to
say, “We have now had 17 years with no global warming and my
original prediction was right so far,” and “for the next 20 years, I
predict global cooling of about 3/10ths of a degree Fahrenheit.”

Here
is the most telling thing Easterbrook said, “cold is way worse for
humanity than warm is,” he correctly adds. The article went on to
say, "alarmists continue with ostentatious rants about nonexistent
warming, just remember that what we're actually seeing was foreseen long
ago by someone with facts on their side.”

There is a number of
things we can take away from all of this. The Prince is clueless,
and likes it that way. He’s deliberately ignoring real science in
favor of models that amount to nothing more than “Game Boy
Science”! Like Game Boys, models spit out what they’re designed to
spit out. He must be historically illiterate regarding climate
since all the previous warming periods were periods highly beneficial to
humanity, and historically these cyclical warming and cooling periods
occurred regularly throughout Earth’s history, and mankind had as little
to do with those cycles then as mankind has now.

Finally,
we need to ask, during all or any of the previous warming periods did
any of the terrible consequences they’re predictiing for today
occur? There is nothing in the historical record to show it
did. If that’s the case why would we believe it would occur
now? We shouldn’t! So why does the Prince?

The green
movement is irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. The
moderates within the movement want to eliminate 4 to 5 billion people,
and they’re the moderates. The radicals, which are a large
minority, believe mankind is a virus that must be eliminated.
There is even an environmental movement that calls itself the Voluntary
Human Extinction Movement that wants people to abstain from reproduction
to cause the gradual voluntary extinction of humankind, in order to
prevent environmental degradation.

And these are the kinds of people to which Charles has emotionally and intellectually attached himself.

So
now we're left with deniers as a "headless chicken brigade", and
warmers - including a Prince - who are among the "chicken little
scaremongers", and one of them is wrong, and those the Prince has
embraced are looking like fools and frauds and - wrong! And he’s
to be the next King of England! Isn’t it fortunate the monarchs of
England are for the most part powerless? Which makes me wonder
what’s wrong with the rest of the Brits for keeping them? Who
knows, at this rate Charles' real legacy may be the end of the monarchy
in England. For that he may be remarkably qualified.

Low temperature records are falling by the hundreds this
winter. This is occurring despite the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change predicting that extreme cold outbreaks will become less
frequent and less severe. When a theory's predictions are contradicted
by real-world events, sound science requires us to re-examine the
theory.

Increasing the atmosphere's carbon dioxide content from
three parts per 10,000 (0.03%) to four parts per 10,000 (0.04%) should
cause some modest global warming. However, the extremely cold winter
reminds us this modest warming is not creating the worldwide climate
catastrophe predicted by global warming activists. It also provides
appropriate context for the next time we experience a heat wave and
activists tell us global warming is to blame.

To the extent
global warming may eventually lessen the frequency and severity of
extreme cold outbreaks, it will benefit, rather than harm, human health
and welfare. Mortality statistics show far more people die as a result
of low temperatures and cold-associated ailments such as pneumonia and
the flu than from hot temperatures and heat-associated ailments.

Many
additional benefits are becoming evident as the Earth continues its
gradual recovery from the Little Ice Age, which afflicted humanity from
approximately 1300 to 1900. Hurricane activity is at historic lows,
tornadoes are weakening, and droughts are becoming less frequent and
severe.

Cold spells, heat waves and extreme weather events will
continue to occur as our planet modestly warms. This winter's extreme
cold outbreaks illustrate that global warming is not changing our
planet's climate severely, as activists claim. To the extent changes are
occurring, these are benefiting rather than harming human health and
welfare.

James Taylor below goes to the trouble of rebutting Michael Mann's tired old assertions

Warmist
point man Michael Mann recently authored a New York Times editorial
presenting global warming activists’ best arguments in favor of a global
warming crisis. A quick look at his weak arguments and false claims
shows why the American public is increasingly siding with skeptics in
the global warming debate.

In his editorial titled “If You See
Something, Say Something,” Mann draws an analogy between global warming
skeptics and terrorists, and urges people to “speak up.” OK, Mike, I
accept your invitation to speak up in the name of truth.

Mann
launches into charlatanism from the very beginning of his editorial:
“The overwhelming consensus among climate scientists is that
human-caused climate change is happening. Yet a fringe minority of our
populace clings to an irrational rejection of well-established science.”

Mann’s
introduction of the issue is a classic bait-and-switch. He attempts to
debate fictitious opponents regarding a fictitious issue for which there
is little debate. Virtually all skeptics agree the Earth is
(thankfully) no longer suffering the pains of the extended Little Ice
Age. Most skeptics, myself included, believe humans have played a role
in this beneficial warming. And it’s a good thing too; the Little Ice
Age, lasting from approximately 1300-1900 A.D., was the coldest period
of the past 10,000 years and brought human misery that was unprecedented
since the dawn of civilization. Afraid to debate the true issues
dividing alarmists and skeptics – such as the pace of recent warming,
the context of recent warming, the likely pace of future warming, and
the likely results of future warming – Mann waves his magic wand and
conjures up an imaginary skeptic straw man who argues no warming has
occurred and we are still in the Little Ice Age.

Not missing a
beat, Mann strengthens his charlatanism with a healthy dose of pixie
dust in paragraph two: “In fact, there is broad agreement among climate
scientists not only that climate change is real (a survey and a review
of the scientific literature published say about 97 percent agree), but
that we must respond to the dangers of a warming planet.”

Really,
Mike? Show us a single survey where 97 percent of climate scientists
say “we must respond to the dangers of a warming planet.” There are a
few dodgy, agenda-driven surveys in which it is claimed 97 percent of
scientists claim the planet is warming (I agree with this assertion, by
the way) and that humans have played a role (I agree with this
assertion, also). But like so many of fellow global warming activists,
Mann either deliberately or through appalling ignorance misrepresents
these dodgy surveys to say something that is not even addressed in the
surveys. None of these surveys show a 97-percent consensus for the
assertion that “we must respond to the dangers of a warming planet.”

If
Mann really wanted to spread truth rather than propaganda, he would
have noted that a recent survey of American Meteorological Society (AMS)
atmospheric scientists found only 38 percent of AMS scientists believe
future warming will be very harmful, and an even smaller 30 percent are
very worried about global warming. This is a far cry from Mann’s
unsupported assertion that “97 percent agree … we must respond to the
dangers of a warming planet.”

Mann then links global warming to
“Midwestern farmers struggling with drought, more damaging wildfires out
West, and withering record summer heat across the country.” For good
measure, he throws in “possible linkages between rapid Arctic warming
and strange weather patterns, like the recent outbreak of Arctic air
across much of the United States.”

Sound science contradicts each
and every one of Mann’s self-serving assertions. Drought has become
less frequent and less severe as our planet modestly warms. Wildfires
are at historic lows. Record heat is becoming less frequent. And even
the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says global
warming will cause fewer extreme cold outbreaks, not more.

Mann
writes fondly of his former colleague Stephen Schneider being a
scientist-activist and concludes his column by urging more scientists to
follow Schneider’s lead. Here is what Schneider said about being a
scientist-activist:

“We need to get some broad based support, to
capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads
of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make
simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts
we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves
in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the
right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

It is pretty clear from Mann’s weak, dishonest arguments that he sides with being “effective” rather than honest.

Pressure
for President Barack Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline
increased after a State Department report played down the impact it
would have on climate change, irking environmentalists and delighting
the project's proponents.

But the White House signaled late on
Friday that a decision on an application by TransCanada Corp to build
the $5.4 billion project would be made "only after careful
consideration" of the report, along with comments from the public and
other government agencies.

"The Final Supplemental Environmental
Impact Statement includes a range of estimates of the project's climate
impacts, and that information will now need to be closely evaluated by
Secretary (of State John) Kerry and other relevant agency heads in the
weeks ahead," White House spokesman Matt Lehrich said.

The White
House comment came after proponents of the pipeline, which would
transport crude from Alberta's oil sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf
Coast, crowed about how the State Department report cleared the way for
Obama to greenlight the project.

The agency made no explicit
recommendation. But the State Department said blocking Keystone XL - or
any pipeline - would do little to slow the expansion of Canada's vast
oil sands, maintaining the central finding of a preliminary study issued
last year.

The 11-volume report's publication opened a new and
potentially final stage of an approval process that has dragged for more
than five years, taking on enormous political significance.

With
another three-month review process ahead and no firm deadline for a
decision on the 1,179-mile (1,898-km) line, the issue threatens to drag
into the 2014 congressional elections in November.

Obama is under
pressure from several vulnerable Democratic senators who favor the
pipeline and face re-election at a time when Democrats are scrambling to
hang on to control of the U.S. Senate. The project looms over the
president's economic and environmental legacy.

Canada's oil sands
are the world's third-largest crude oil reserve, behind Venezuela and
Saudi Arabia, and the largest open to private investment. The oil sands
contain more than 170 billion barrels of bitumen, a tar-like form of
crude that requires more energy to extract than conventional oil.

Obama
said in June that he was closely watching the review and said he
believed the pipeline should go ahead "only if this project does not
significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution."

The
report offered some solace to climate activists who want to stem the
rise of oil sands output. It reaffirmed that Canada's heavy crude
reserves require more energy to produce and process - and therefore
result in higher greenhouse gas emissions - than conventional oil
fields.

But after extensive economic modeling, it found that the
line itself would not slow or accelerate the development of the oil
sands. That finding is largely in line with what oil industry executives
have long argued.

"This final review puts to rest any credible
concerns about the pipeline's potential negative impact on the
environment," said Jack Gerard, head of the oil industry's top lobby
group, the American Petroleum Institute.

The optimism was echoed
by the chief executive of TransCanada, and Canada's Natural Resources
Minister Joe Oliver, who said he hoped Obama would approve the project
in the first half of 2014.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
will consult with eight government agencies over the next three months
about the broader national security, economic and environmental impacts
of the project before deciding whether he thinks it should go ahead.

The
public will have 30 days to comment, beginning next week. A previous
comment period in March yielded more than 1.5 million comments.

Kerry has no set deadline. The open-ended review made some pipeline supporters nervous.

"The
administration's strategy is to defeat the project with continuing
delays," said Republican Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota, where the
oil boom has boosted truck and rail traffic.

Some North Dakota
oil would move on the pipeline, designed to take as much as 830,000
barrels of crude per day from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City,
Nebraska, where it would meet the project's already complete southern
leg to take the crude to the refining hub on the Texas Gulf coast.

The
State Department's study found that oil from the Canadian oil sands is
about 17 percent more "greenhouse gas intensive" than average oil used
in the United States because of the energy required to extract and
process it. It is 2 percent to 10 percent more greenhouse gas intensive
than the heavy grades of oil it replaces.

The Sierra Club, an
environmental advocacy group, said the report shows the pipeline would
create as much pollution each year as the exhaust from almost 6 million
cars - evidence that it said will be hard for Obama to ignore.

"Reports
of an industry victory on the Keystone XL pipeline are vastly
over-stated," said Michael Brune, the group's executive director.

President
Barack Obama is sticking to a fossil-fuel dependent energy policy,
delivering a blow to a monthslong, behind-the-scenes effort by nearly
every major environmental group to convince the White House that the
policy is at odds with his goals on global warming.

The division
between Obama and some of his staunchest supporters has been simmering
for months, a surprising schism that shows the fine line the
environmental community has walked with a Democratic president who has
taken significant steps on climate change, and the recalcitrance of
Obama’s White House when it is criticized, even by its allies.

Days
before Obama’s State of the Union speech, the heads of 18 environmental
groups sent a letter to the president that had long been in the works
saying his policy doesn’t make sense. They see a contradiction in
increased American production of energy from oil and natural gas at the
same time the government is attempting to reduce the pollution blamed
for global warming.

"We believe that continued reliance on an
‘all-of-the-above’ energy strategy would be fundamentally at odds with
your goal of cutting carbon pollution," they wrote.

But in his
Tuesday night speech, Obama proclaimed that embracing all forms of
energy, even carbon-pollution fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas,
is working.

"Taken together, our energy policy is creating jobs and leading to a cleaner, safer planet," said Obama.

White
House officials knew last spring that a letter objecting to their
energy policy was in the works. They urged the environmental groups to
wait until after Obama delivered a speech on climate change in June,
hoping his aggressive steps on global warming would change their minds.

"There
is a cognitive dissonance inside the administration. We believe their
commitment to fight climate change is genuine, and yet the energy policy
goals of the administration make achieving climate change much more
difficult," Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said
in an interview with the Associated Press.

The environmental
groups’ stance could be dismissed as advocacy groups just doing what
they do — pushing the president to go further on an issue important to
their members. Already, they have protested a pipeline project carrying
Canadian tar sands oil into the U.S., fought to shutter coal-fired power
plants and opposed hydraulic fracturing.

But for the major
groups, the letter marked new territory, the first time the lobby has
been both united and sharply critical of Obama’s central environmental
issue and one they support in principle: curbing climate change.

The
EU’s energy commissioner, Günther Oettinger, has spoken out against a
planned 40% cut in CO2 emissions across the EU by 2030, just a week
after he helped to launch the policy.

Speaking at an ‘Industry
Matters’ conference in Brussels, Oettinger said those who expected the
cut to “save the world” were “arrogant or stupid”, and publicly
questioned whether the reduction was even achievable.

“It’s an
ambitious compromise and I am a little bit sceptical,” he told delegates
at the conference, organised by the pan-European employers'
confederation BusinessEurope.

“I have to be constructive as I’m a member of the team but I’m sceptical.”

The
energy commissioner, who argued for a lesser 35% goal behind the
scenes, said the EU was only on track to cut emissions 20% by the
decades's end because of economic crisis and the closure of soviet-era
plants in Eastern Europe.

“These were low-hanging fruits but
there are no more now, so every percentage going down gets more
difficult and cost-intensive,” he said. The EU was just responsible for
10.6% of global emissions today, a sum that would fall to 4.5% by 2030,
he noted.

“To think that with this 4.5% of global emissions you
can save the world is not realistic,” Oettinger said. “It is arrogant or
stupid. We need a global commitment.”

The EU’s proposed 2030
package will now be discussed at a European summit of EU heads of state
in March, before a new proposal is revealed in September, the same month
that an international climate summit meets in Lima, Peru.

A
final package should then be agreed before July 2015, ahead of a climate
summit in Paris that is supposed to forge a binding global agreement.

As
well as addressing climate issues, Oettinger, a Christian Democrat from
Germany, said that in the long-term Europe might import gas from Iraq,
Nigeria, Libya and Qatar.

Shale gas 'pioneers'

He hailed
the UK and Poland as cheap energy “pioneers” for their efforts to
exploit shale gas and said that perhaps the US could export some of its
shale here.

“Europe is on the way to deindustrialise and the US has a different strategy,” he said.

Oettinger’s
speech did not chime with the Commission’s own recent ‘Trends to 2050’
analysis which forecast a 32% CO2 cut by 2030 under a business-as-usual
scenario.

Environmentalists say that including surplus carbon
allowances under the EU Emissions Trading System would take this figure
to 40% without additional efforts. Friends of the Earth spokesman Brook
Riley dubbed Oettinger’s remarks “utter nonsense”.

As a whole,
the EU sees a strong commitment to cutting greenhouse gases as key to
persuading other countries to make similar pledges.

Preserving
the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from
elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life
-- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer
come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly
copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text
and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even
if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That
the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however
disputed.

Context for the minute average temperature change recorded: At any
given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about
100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much
seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. A minute rise in
average temperature in that context is trivial if it is not meaningless
altogether. Warmism is a money-grubbing racket, not science.

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by
experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you
believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians,
nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers".
It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an"
could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed
holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household
items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays",
"might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global
cooling

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has
been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd;
indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a
widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to
acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of
duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is
nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run
the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics
are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of
the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development
of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes
involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer
driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on
hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off
abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the
real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my
research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much
writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in
detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that
field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because
no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped
that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I
have shifted my attention to health related science and climate
related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic.
Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC
blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental
research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers
published in both fields during my social science research career

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is
reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global
warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It
seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in
global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics
or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future.
Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities
in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism
is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known
regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are
on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the
science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let
alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world.
Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a
scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to
be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be
none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions.
Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would
disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific
statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a
psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to
be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous
pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation
of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that
suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old
guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be
unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with
tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can
afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society
today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were.
But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that
seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count
(we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader
base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an
enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the
weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate
50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met
Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The
Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because
they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their
global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here)
that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative
donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they
agree with

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the
Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a
pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we
worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that
clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down
when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years
poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that
might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid
their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback
that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2
and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence
gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years
show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2
will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to
bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to
increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the
plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its
carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It
admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast
filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of
the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather
improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the
universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for
making up such an implausible tale.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A "HEAT TRAPPING GAS". A gas can become
warmer by contact with something warmer or by infrared radiation
shining on it or by adiabatic (pressure) effects but it cannot trap
anything. Air is a gas. Try trapping something with it!

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all
logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level
rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the
average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting
point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the
Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which
NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees.
So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And
the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not
raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of
Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the
water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated
it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with
that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The
whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening
of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen:
"We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of
decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very
partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw
data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that
it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones'
Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate
data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make
the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something
wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given
conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive
such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real
environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more
motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity
that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence
showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of
the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty
and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of
the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to
admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the
date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been
clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that
saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of
society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that
fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called
phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming
is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the
hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so
Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people
want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing
all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the
real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better
than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all
Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a
Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global
Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie
panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a
new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the
threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit
the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The
real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong.
The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly
"Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first
performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop.
Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first
performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience
walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate
are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913,
we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that
supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note
also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably
well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming
denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it.
That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses
believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say
that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed --
and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when
people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as
too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy.
Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common
hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact
that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few
additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a
hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we
breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical
to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad
enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180)
must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not
to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the
ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research
grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of
money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some
belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of
"The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked
event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist
instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without
material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such
people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example.
Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that
instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious
committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them
to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them
to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and
folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES
beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any
known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough
developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil
fuel theory

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this,
that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light;
preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts
shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that
his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes
to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the
earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise
reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so
small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally
without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a
time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures
tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th
century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because
they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely.
But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern
hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the
world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is
claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since
seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to
even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility.
Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the
atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the
oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No
comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base
balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational
basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units
has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air
movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an
unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate
experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables
over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years
hence. Give us all a break!

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This
crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I
am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils,
namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by
an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In
such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and
are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts
production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to
be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to
every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper
was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film.
It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account
fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is
nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a
Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven
climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of
the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the
paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in
recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie
mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that
reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented
July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even
have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact
that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving
into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got
the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:"The
modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by
Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the
number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an
acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correla­tion coefficient
between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was
doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green,
Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished
the alleged connection between economic condi­tions and lynchings in
Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal­ysis in
1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and
economic condi­tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The
correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."
So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the
Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature
rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if
measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been
considered.

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar
cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal
electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic
to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the
article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename
the following: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20121106-1520/jonjayray.comuv.com/